Warner Music has been acquired by a largest business group whose investments range from oil and aluminum companies to the Britain's Top-up TV.
Access Industries, organizing by Russian born billionaire Len Blavatnik, rewarded $3.3bn in cash for the world's third biggest music firm. Warner, whose artists include Bruno Mars, has been trying with falling sales and revenues. Access Industries already has a small stake in the US firm.
Warner Music Group, whose all music and publishing businesses have been put up for sale, will convert into a private company with its shares delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.
Chairman Edgar Bronfman said Access Industries was "helpful of the company's vision, development plan and artists, while bringing a new industrial outlook and proficiency in technology and media".
"Most significantly, Access supports Warner Music's pledges to our recording artists and songwriters who are the basis of our latest and future achievement," he said.
The sale of Warner Music marks "the end of the public pure-play music studios, which have been under harass from self-governing tags begun by musicians and under fire from the Internet," commented Jon Ogg, an expert with 247WallSt.com.
There are gossips that Mr Blavatnik also desires to insert EMI to his portfolio of businesses.
Furthermore its largest industrial interests, his US-based Access Industries also have the UK arm of film and TV distributor Icon.
Mr. Blavatnik, who has an expected luck of $7.5bn, is a director of Russian oil firm TNK and aluminum giant Rusal.
Warner shares increased 3.5% during Friday business to end at $8.18 on Wall Street, just small of the $8.25 per share sale price.
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