The joy of youthful innocence Friday, November 16, 2007
I happened to be speaking to an ex-EMI employee this week, who'd only recently left the company. When I suggested that Terra Firma would probably break the company up, to leave themselves with the publishing and back catalogue bits, she got most annoyed.
"Guy Hands verbally promised the staff that he wouldn't do that and he'd lose a lot of face if he did".
Hmmm. I can see that weighing heavily on Guy's mind were he to face the dilema that a breakup of EMI represented the best value option. "Shall I lose face with EMI staff or with the City and my investors who look to me to make them (and myself) stellar returns?"
I also learnt this week from a senior EMI executive that Guy's new management team are doing a root & branch review of the business asking penetrating questions of the EMI staffer such as
- "What do you actually do?"
- "Why, on earth, do you do that?"
- "How does the company make money from that?"
Don't forget these are generally people (like myself) who've not worked in the music industry and so aren't acclimatised to the culture and practices of the music sector. People, who instead, are driven by the profit motive and who may not understand the importance of pandering to big music stars, albeit I confess their are tons of similarities between the music industry and the City (egos, remuneration....).
Labels: EMI
posted by John Wilson @ 9:02 AM Permanent Link
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