Umm, are we to take it those new Beatles records aren’t reaching their “earning potential”??
Nice, soft, pillowy TMT punchline Guy Hands and his whacky-yet-lovable British private equity firm Terra Firma (that’s “solid ground,” don’t you know) Capital Partners Ltd have certainly been hard at work improving the bottom line of ill-famed, ill-fated, sloppy eater, messy houseguest, gassy sleeper, and crumbling worldwide music conglomerate EMI. But hey, to borrow a phrase from EMI’s own hallowed catalogue, just because you’re “fixin’ a hole where the rain gets in” doesn’t mean that you don’t still have a serious fucking termite problem to figure out.
In other words, there’s still a whole mess of problems over there, as evidenced by Guy’s very decorous but still pretty unmistakably Eggs Benedict-on-face statement that Terra Firma might have “paid too much money” for the lead-lined ocean liner of such stars as The Beatles and Coldplay. The ailing music group accounted for the vast majority of Terra Firma's $1.96 billion writedowns this year and Terra Firma was forced to inject extra capital into EMI twice in just six months (including a $46 million “injection” this past May to keep the company within the terms of its debt agreements. Ouch. Sounds painful.)
Hands, currently the Chief Investment Officer, said that Terra Firma has certainly succeeded thus far in boosting the earnings at EMI‘s recorded music division to about 160 million pounds ($263 million) last year from around $82 million when they first purchased ‘er in 2007. But he nevertheless admitted during his speech at a Dow Jones private equity conference on Thursday that “if the EMI auction started two weeks later, it wouldn’t have occurred. We wouldn’t have bought it. We’d have 90 percent of our funds still to invest and we’d look like geniuses.” Damn hell-ass geniuses, Guy.
Two weeks later? No, Hands isn’t just being a Grizzly Bear fan. See, Terra Firma flew its ill-fated $6.5 billion buyout of the tale-spinning, nose-diving EMI at the height of the buyout boom, a.k.a. right before that credit crunch thing. Regret city. Solid ground? Here we come.
