Qilai Shen/Bloomberg NewsGuy Hands, chief of Terra Firma.
8:08 p.m. | Updated
Guy Hands is back.
Months after Citigroup seized EMI Group from him, Mr. Hands, the charismatic British financier, went to court on Tuesday in an effort to win back control of the music company.
Mr. Hands has asked the High Court in London for access to documents that show the valuation methodology used by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to justify Citigroup’s seizure of EMI in February.
If a judge granted Mr. Hands the right to see those documents, he could use them to challenge Citigroup’s taking control of the music company. Mr. Hands believes that EMI, which was making interest payments, was not insolvent when Citigroup took it over.
“We believe there is no basis for any claim against Citi,” said Danielle Romero-Apsilos, a bank spokeswoman.
This latest legal dust-up comes as Citigroup has put EMI up for sale. A handful of private equity firms and music labels have expressed an interest in the company.
Mr. Hands’s action could scare off any potential buyers. But Citigroup plans to indemnify any of the bidders from legal claims by Mr. Hands, according to two people briefed on the deal who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Tuesday’s move rekindles what has been a bitter dispute between Mr. Hands and his former bankers over EMI, the record label whose stable of artists include Snoop Dogg and Katy Perry.
Chris Ratcliffe/BloombergThe EMI music label is being shopped by Citigroup.
Last year, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, a jury cleared Citigroup of any wrongdoing in its role in the sale of EMI. Mr. Hands had sought an $8 billion recovery, plus punitive damages, accusing the bank of defrauding him during the auction of EMI.
He directed his charges at David Wormsley, a top British banker at Citigroup and Mr. Hands’s once-trusted adviser. He said that Mr. Wormsley artificially drove up EMI’s price by lying to him that there was another bidder for the company.
He said that the misrepresentation caused him to pay $6.8 billion for the company.
Mr. Hands is appealing the verdict.
The debt-laden purchase of EMI by Mr. Hands’s firm, Terra Firma Capital Partners, is widely considered one of the buyout boom’s worst deals. It was struck in August 2007 just as the credit markets were freezing up. At the same time, the record business began to tank. Mr. Hands bet about 30 percent of Terra Firma’s most recent fund on EMI. It lost about $2.5 billion on the deal.
Despite those woes, Mr. Hands continues to press on.
Terra Firma plans to raise a new multibillion-dollar fund next year. Aside from the EMI debacle, the rest of Terra Firma’s most recent fund has performed well. Though it is still suffering paper losses, Mr. Hands said that he hopes to return all of the capital invested to his investors.
Citigroup, meanwhile, continues to carry out its auction of EMI. Potential bidders that have expressed an interest in the company include Warner Music and the billionaire investor Ronald O. Perelman.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=df28dc3174eb00f8667df03458ca1426
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