EMI wants to offload, finding buyers difficult

Further indications of the tough going Terra Firma are having trying to make EMI into a plausible private equity business: the FT reports that the label has had difficulty finding anyone to take up assets it wanted to offload to help get down the corporate debt:

Terra Firma initially discussed a sale of its large Japanese business as well as its Christian, country music, classical and jazz labels. Talks then changed to possible licensing deals and have stalled since the arrival of Elio Leoni-Sceti as chief executive of EMI Music, the recorded music division, in September.

The company has now come up with a new wheeze - it's trying to interest its supposed rivals to take over its US distribution. The idea would be that Universal or Sony or whoever would write EMI a large cheque for the right to keep large piles of unwanted Robbie Williams records in warehouses across the US, and to drive boxes of Viva La Diva Loca And All His Friends about the nation, in the hope that EMI would then pay them for the services they provide in the future.

Given that this offer is being made by an increasingly out-of-options label, the shrewd rival might wager it'd be better to wait until EMI collapses under the weight of its own debt and pick up the business for a song, rather than invest heavily in a business which is starting to sweat more than a bus driver crossing an icy mountain pass in a gale.