EMI Group plc has once again reached outside the music business to shore up its management team,Monday naming longtime consumer products executive Elio Leoni-Sceti as the label's new CEO of recorded music. The appointment allows Terra Firma Capital Partners' Guy Hands to step aside from overseeing daily operations at the label. Hands, who led Terra Firma's £3.2 billion ($6.2 billion) buyout of financially troubled EMI last year, will become its nonexecutive chairman.
Leoni-Sceti, 42, has spent the past 16 years in various capacities at Reckitt Benckiser plc, best known for its cleaning products and personal-care items. He was previously a brand manager at Procter & Gamble Co. The hire follows several other executive appointments from outside the music industry, including a pair of key digital executives in former Google Inc. CIO Douglas Merrill and "Second Life" creator Cory Ondrejka.
EMI's market share has fallen to just 9.4% of the U.S. market, according to a report from Nielsen SoundScan last week. The company said in January that 2,000 layoffs were likely in an ongoing restructuring, which included big cuts in late June, but EMI received a bump from the recent release of Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" album, which is among the year's best sellers.
Still, the company has lost major acts such as Radiohead and the Rolling Stones over the past year, with some exiting artists expressing frustration with the company's direction under Hands' management.
"Terra Firma doesn't understand the music industry," Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien told The U.K.'s Guardian Observer Web site. Some have speculated that EMI would do better to focus on its catalog and abandon signing new artists altogether. EMI became the first, and to date the only, of the four major labels to insist that iTunes carry its catalog of songs without DRM software, and Merrill has stressed an innovative digital strategy that will include finding ways to generate revenue from free services. The company also implemented a handful of other executive changes, including naming a new EMEA regional president. - Paul Bonanos
See July 7 press release on Leoni-Sceti from EMI
See June 19 post on EMI's strategic direction from Tech Confidential
See April 2 and June 10 posts on EMI's management moves from Tech Confidential
For more, see Daily Swarm and Silicon Alley Insider
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