Warner Music Group Chief Executive Robert Kinkel has previously hinted that his company is keen on making acquisitions to expand its presence in key areas of the music business.
Now he has found the executive to lead the mission.
Michael Ryan-Southern, a widely respected executive, is leaving Goldman Sachs to join Warner Music Group, where he will lead all mergers and acquisitions activities for the world’s largest music company.
At Warner, he will assume the newly created role of executive vice president of corporate development, effective in August.
The executive has 20 years of financial experience and has been involved in numerous significant financings, equity sales and acquisitions in the music industry.
He resigned from his role as global head of music and live entertainment investment banking at Goldman Sachs and joined the firm in 2021.
Prior to joining Goldman Sachs in 2021, Michael Ryan-Southern spent eight years in senior leadership roles across various portfolio companies at Mubadala Capital and Mubadala Investment Company.
The executive has worked for six years at EMI Music Publishing CompanyNearly three of them served as deputy finance chiefs (between January 2016 and November 2018).
While in this role at EMI, he was instrumental in the sale of EMI Music Publishing to Sony Corporation, a transaction that valued EMI Music Publishing at $4.75 billion.
During this process he worked closely with the sell-side in the EMI/Sony transaction, Mubadala Capital.
After leaving EMI in November 2018, Ryan-Southern served as President and CEO of Hakkasan Group (an asset of Mubadala) from 2018 to 2020 and REEF (also an asset of Mubadala) in 2021 Financial Officer, and later joined Goldman Sachs as Chief Financial Officer.
Prior to joining EMI, he worked at KPMG for more than eight years.
News of Warner’s key hire comes shortly after WMG began discussions about a possible acquisition of Paris-based music company Believe. retreat from any potential transaction.
During WMG’s first-quarter (fiscal second-quarter) earnings call, the company’s leadership team emphasized that despite no deal with Believe, the company continues to look for further M&A opportunities.
“It’s our job to research the market. If there are [are] “If there are opportunities to accelerate our initiatives, we will seize them,” WMG’s chief financial officer said. Brian Castellani.
In his introductory remarks on the same earnings call, WMG CEO Robert Kyncl noted that WMG “remains alert to our acquisition opportunities, which may enhance our capabilities.”
Later on the conference call, in response to a question from analyst Benjamin Black about “where?” strategic mergers and acquisitions Suitable [WMG’s] “We have a clear strategy to expand our product offerings to serve more artists,” said Robert Kinkel. Their careers are broader. We are working on this. Our team worked very hard to build all the right features we needed.
He added: “We are always looking for ways to accelerate because all this work takes time. Whenever there is an option on the market that would allow us to accelerate our roadmap, we will consider it.
Meanwhile, an internal note sent to the company’s global team in January may contain a hint as to where the company might be looking to invest.
January 8, at internal memo Robert Kyncl highlighted three key areas that MBW Acquisition WMG will focus on in 2024, including increasing participation in music; increasing the value of music, and improving the way WMG employees work together.
Kinkel wrote that as part of a plan to “increase participation in music,” there will be a greater focus on “distribution and management.”
Kyncl also explained that WMG is “building a scalable and efficient distribution infrastructure so that we can fundamentally and efficiently grow large ‘middle class‘ artists, and our top labels can continue to focus on the artists with the most potential.”
global music business
