Isn't high finance brilliant?

Warners have often been suggested as a likely buyer for the bits of EMI that Terra Firma haven't broken. But Warners aren't exactly flush, so how would they do it?

According to stories today, the current owners of Warners will sell themselves to someone else, so the other, richer concern could then buy EMI as well.

Goldman Sachs have been called in to advise on it, and it's not like they'd suggest anyone doing anything fantastically stupid and ruinious, is it?

Goldman have other ideas, too - how about if they flogged off their publishing arm to KKR, who could then buy EMI, keep EMI's publishing bit and sell EMI's records business to Warners? Thereby creating one company which has the pretty solid publishing business, and another which... well, I'm sure it'd have valuable warehouses full of unsold CDs. They're always looking for stuff to grind up to put on road surfaces, I understand.