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In The News

The principals of M&A are quoted regularly and frequently in publications ranging from Business Week and Forbes to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, and other major publications worldwide. M&A has been the subject of interviews on business-radio and television programs including the Fox Business News, CBS MarketWatch, The Street.com TV, Yahoo! Finance TV, Sirius XM Radio, BBC-Worldwide and CNBC. Below are links to a sample of articles in which M&A has been quoted:

Warner Music mulls $5 billion IPO

September 2004

Warner Music mulls $5 billion IPO

By Steve Gelsi, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Sept. 23, 2004

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Rumblings of major initial public offerings from Warner Music and Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root construction unit surfaced Thursday as the IPO market showed continued signs of perking up.

Warner Music Group is eying an initial public offering of up to $5 billion after the unit was sold for $2.6 billion by Time Warner to Edgar Bronfman Jr. and a group of private equity firms earlier this year, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

An unidentified source cited by the newspaper said an attempt to go public could be made by April of next year. Warner Music declined to comment in the report.

Ken Marlin, a media business consultant of Marlin & Associates, said an IPO of Warner Music "might fly" with investors if the company can show growth.

"The music industry has been beaten down pretty severely for the past five years but it started coming back this year," Marlin said. "This is not a bad time for Warner to be considering an IPO."

He pointed out that the success of Apple's iTunes service and similar offerings from rivals are among the signs that the "music industry is past its trough and they've come to an accommodation with the electronic distributors of music."

A successful IPO can establish a valuation that's more favorable to Bronfman and his partners in any possible merger talks with larger rival EMI, a leading bidder in the sale by Warner Music's former parent, Time Warner. See full story.

Along with Bronfman's Lexa Partners, the investor group includes Thomas H. Lee Partners, Bain Capital and Providence Equity Partners. They are obtaining Time Warner's recorded music operations and Warner/Chappell music-publishing business, including the option of buying back into the business on favorable terms in the future.

Warner Music includes Warner Bros., Atlantic and Elektra Records; and Warner/Chappell Music, whose more than 1 million copyrights makes it one of the industry's biggest music publishing companies.

Bronfman faces billions of debt left over from the acquisition, as he laid out a significant part of his fortune from his days at Vivendi Universal to acquire a company with 12 percent of the market, compared with 25 percent for Universal.

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