Robert S. Wiesenthal, a top deal maker at Sony for the last decade, is leaving the company to become chief operating officer of the Warner Music Group, the company announced on Thursday. The move could help Warner expand through acquisitions and compete more handily against the music world’s two corporate giants, Universal and Sony.
Mr. Wiesenthal, the former chief financial officer of the Sony Corporation of America, and most recently the president of international at Sony’s music publishing arm, will move to Warner at the start of the new year, according to a company statement.
He is expected to advise Warner’s controlling shareholder, the Russian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, on strategy, and also pursue significant deals for the company. The most likely acquisition target is the recorded music assets of EMI, which Universal, its new owner, is being forced to divest itself of by European regulators.
Among the major corporate powers of the music industry, Warner is a distant third after Universal and Sony.
Warner’s announcement said that Mr. Wiesenthal would report to Stephen F. Cooper, the chief executive, and that “all other reporting relationships at the company remain unchanged” — an indication that Mr. Wiesenthal’s primary responsibility will be to make media deals to expand the company.
His departure from Sony was announced in an internal memo to employees on Thursday morning by Martin N. Bandier, Sony/ATV’s chairman.
Mr. Blavatnik’s holding company, Access Industries, bought Warner Music Group last year for $3.3 billion, and Warner has lately undergone a series of top management changes. The appointment of Mr. Wiesenthal is Warner’s first major new hire since Lyor Cohen, the company’s chief executive of recorded music, resigned in September.
Mr. Wiesenthal has long been focused on deal making. In a story that has become famous in the music industry, he negotiated a deal with Michael Jackson in a Dubai hotel room in 2005 that kept Mr. Jackson from filing for bankruptcy; in exchange, Sony took greater operational control of Sony/ATV, the joint venture owned by Sony and the Jackson estate. He also negotiated Sony’s buyout of Bertelsmann’s 50 percent stake in Sony BMG Music Entertainment in 2008.
More recently, Mr. Wiesenthal led Sony’s $2.2 billion deal to acquire EMI Music Publishing through a complex consortium of investors that included David Geffen, the Jackson estate and others. As a result of that deal, which closed in June, Sony is now the largest music publisher in the world, with control of more than two million songs.
Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/warner-music-adds-robert-wiesenthal-a-top-deal-maker-at-sony/?partner=rss&emc=rss