Japanese entertainment giant Sony said on Tuesday it will acquire music publisher and record label EMI for about $1.9 billion. Sony signed a deal with Abu Dhabi-based investment firm Mubadala to buy its 60 percent stake in EMI, giving the Japanese company an indirect stake of about 90 percent, Sony said in a statement. “We are very pleased to bring EMI Music Publishing into the Sony family and maintain our top position in the music publishing industry,” Sony Chief Executive Kenichiro Yoshida said in a statement. He said the music business has “experienced a boom in recent years” driven by subscription-based streaming services. EMI is the second-largest music publisher by revenue and owns or holds the rights to 2.1 million pieces of music. It owns or manages about two million songs, including classics by Queen, Sam Smith, Pharrell Williams and Drake. Sony already owns 2.3 million copyrights, including the Beatles catalog. The deal is valued at $4.75 billion, according to Sony’s statement, which also said that “completion of the transaction is subject to certain closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.” Later Tuesday, Sony will unveil its latest strategic plan under new CEO Yoshida, who is expected to focus more on content than hardware. The electronics and entertainment giant last month reported record annual profits of $4.5 billion, a rapid recovery helped by better sales across the board and box office hits like the Jumanji reboot. Those figures were seen as a fitting farewell for Kazuo Hirai, who recently stepped down as the company’s CEO after spending the past six years pulling the company out of deep financial trouble. Hirai led an aggressive restructuring campaign at Sony that saw thousands of jobs cut and business units and assets sold off. However, investors appeared skeptical about the takeover, with Sony shares falling about 0.6 percent in the first minutes of trading, underperforming the broader Japanese market, which was flat.
Sony buys EMI Music Publishing in $1.9 billion deal
