EMI said it would sell its recorded music units to universal music for £1.2bn, and the other half of EMI's business - the lucrative music publishing unit will be sold to a Sony-led consortium for more than $2bn.
EMI Music is one of the world's leading music companies, home to some of famous artists, such as the beatles,coldplay and 30 seconds to mars. And now EMI is owned by US bank Citigroup, after it was seized from Terra Firma.
Universal Music chairman and chief executive Lucian Grainge said,"For me, as an Englishman, EMI was the pre-eminent music company that I grew up with. Its artists and their music provided the soundtrack to my teenage years".
He also said:"Universal Music Group is committed to both preserving EMI's cultural
heritage and artistic diversity and also investing in its artists and
people to grow the company's assets for the future."
SONY also treats this deal as a part of expanding its music business in European. After SONY bought its music publishing, SONY will own 1,300,000 songs' copyright.
EMI has its economic problem since in 2007, at this year private equity firm Terra Firma, led by Guy Hands, bought EMI for £4.2bn just before the credit crunch sent the global financial markets into turmoil.
But it did not save EMI and struggled to meet payments on the £2.6bn it had borrowed from Citigroup to fund the deal. However, last year Terra Firma lost the case with citigroup which made EMI drop into economic crisis again.
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