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Selling music companies
出售音乐集团
Siren song
塞壬之歌
No one wants to pay for music. Yet investors are splurging on music firms
人们不想为听歌付费，但投资者们仍在音乐公司上挥霍
May 12th 2011 | from the print edition
And you thought Cher was extravagant
SAY what you like about the men who built business empires from the wreckage of Soviet communism. To money-losing Western outfits, they are angels. Roman Abramovich turned Chelsea football club into a winner. Alexander Lebedev rescued the Evening Standard and Independent newspapers. And on May 6th Len Blavatnik, an oil magnate, agreed to pay $3.3 billion for Warner Music Group. The stunned reaction among music executives suggests that his is the greatest act of charity yet.
谈谈这些你所听说过的男人，来自苏维埃共和国存体却创造了商业帝国。对于西方亏损机构而言，他们就如同天使。罗曼阿布拉莫维奇将切尔西足球酒吧变成冠军；亚历山大列别杰夫将《伦敦晚报》和《独立日报》从运营困境中解救；以及5月6日石油大亨布拉瓦特尼克，投资华纳音乐集团33亿美元，这一惊人举动是只因几位音乐执行推举他为目前最富有的慈善家。
Warner Music was born in 2003, when Edgar Bronfman and a group of investors paid $2.6 billion for Time Warner’s music division. Mr Bronfman, heir to a whisky fortune, was known as an unlucky investor. New York magazine called him “possibly the stupidest person in the media business”. Not any more. He has managed to sell a company in a collapsing industry for substantially more than it cost (and there are rumours that another suitor will yet try to trump Mr Blavatnik’s offer). It is like making a killing on a buggy-whip firm in the car-crazy 1920s.
华纳音乐诞生于2003年，由艾德加??布隆夫曼和一群投资家于投资了26亿美元而成立。布隆夫曼先生在收购了威士忌酒的产业后，被公认为不幸运的投资者。《纽约杂志》称他“可能是媒体商业中最愚蠢的人”。的确再也找不到更愚蠢的人了。他管理了售出一家在夕阳产业的公司，但事实上高超它应有的售价，（并且有谣言称另一家参与竞标的公司手中仍有布拉瓦特尼克先生的王牌）。这就如同在20世纪20年代扼杀一家过时的公司。
