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Business News Labels & Publishers
BMG amongst bidders for Universal’s songs for sale
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 24 April 2012
According to Bloomberg, BMG is leading the bidding to buy the publishing catalogues Universal Music put up for sale last month.
As previously reported, Universal is selling three collections of songs owned by its publishing company – a catalogue of classical works, another of gospel music, and a third of German schlager music – to help fund its acquisition of the EMI record companies.
As the catalogues come from Universal’s publishing rather than recordings business, the sale isn’t intended as a concession to competition regulators who are assessing whether or not the major’s acquisition of the EMI labels would give it too much market dominance in the record industry.
Bloomberg’s sources say that both BMG and Providence Equity Partners are in talks with Universal about acquiring the songs and compositions. Some other independent publishers (very possibly Imagem) and equity groups have also expressed an interest, though one company expected to bid, Warner Music, has not come forward.
Of course if Sony and Universal’s bids to buy the EMI publishing and recordings businesses respectively go ahead, Warner will be dwarfed by its two remaining major label rivals – the opposite of what Warner’s top guard hoped for when they also bid for the EMI labels.
But nevertheless, while Warner bosses are presumably eager to grow through acquisition down the line, the company’s owner Access Industries seemingly remains keen to not enter races where it may be forced to overbid for catalogues, a policy which forced it out of the bidding for EMI.
