EMI: bleak future

EMI's position as a standalone company is looking incredibly dodgy, as it gets circled by a number of private equity companies. These, the shark-lions of the financial world, have a basic way of working: they pay over the odds for struggling companies, take them private, flog off any bits worth anything, load the eviscerated corpse up with debt, and flog it on before it falls over. Anyone who's seen, say, the AA descend from motoring organisation to understaffed, asset-stripped nightmare will recognise the basic idea.

If EMI falls out of the public arena, it's likely the new owners will try and lob the record company part off to Warners - although why a sale from Permira, One Equity, Cerberus or Fortress would be thought plausible when a straight merger between the two companies would have stalled when seeking approval from EU regulators, is anyone's guess.

So, bad news for the bands and staff, then; but with the company performing less pleasingly than Paolo Nutini after a Celtic victory - it's just suspended paying a dividend - it's likely shareholders will sign up to any deal which promises to dig them out of the sorry mess.