"Harry Ramsden's-EADS merger cancelled amid political impasse"

From the BBC:

Celebrated fish and chips restaurant Harry Ramsden's and aerospace and defence giant EADS have decided to cancel their planned merger, after talks were thwarted by political deadlock.

It followed days of talks between the Yorkshire, French and German governments to overcome political objections. Yorkshire county council wanted its counterparts to agree to limit their influence in the merged firm in order to maintain Harry Ramsden's strong working relations with Sarson's Malt Vinegar refineries and local potato farmers. The BBC understands that Germany was fundamentally opposed to the deal.

"Once German intransigence became clear - as it did overnight - EADS and Harry Ramsden's had no option but to call the whole thing off," said the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston.

"We are obviously disappointed that we were unable to reach an acceptable agreement with our various government stakeholders," said Harry Ramsden's CEO Marija Simovi.

EADS head Tom Enders said: "A special thank-you goes to Marija Simovi for his trust and partnership. It is, of course, a pity we didn't succeed but I'm glad we tried. I'm not so glad I tried their guacamole though, it tasted like cardboard and was all lumpy."

EADS shares jumped 3% as the news broke. Harry Ramsden's is owned by a private investment company Boparan Ventures Limited whose shares are not listed.

NOW That's what I call complete bollocks

From The Sun:

THE party could be over for pop institution NOW That’s What I Call Music. As part of Universal’s takeover of EMI, the record label must sell EMI’s 50 per cent stake in the classic compilation brand.

Unless someone invests in the 29-year-old album series, it will end with NOW 83 in November..

I think NOW is safe because it still makes so much money. No other compilation brand comes close to its 100million sales. And if NOW were to be taken out of the mix for labels and artists — it would leave a huge hole in their earnings.

The reason why the NOW albums were always so good is because it was a collaboration between several major record labels, who all allowed their most popular hits to go on it. For sure, it was initiated/managed by Virgin/EMI together, but in those days, there were still half a dozen major (of whom EMI were just one) and dozens of minor record labels; it needed somebody to get the ball rolling to everybody's mutual benefit.

But so what, either the NOW series makes money or it doesn't. And it does. Further, NOW is not a business in the traditional sense, it's just a brand name or a boxful of contracts (a bit like Bernie Ecclestone - the entire assets of his Formula One empire would fit in a briefcase as it's all just contracts). NOW has few or no employees, no pressing plant, no assets, no artists under contract, it has nothing other than itself and the fact that people go and buy NOW albums by force of habit (I've got every one from 49 onwards).

So EMI does not actually need to sell its stake to anybody and nobody needs to buy it, and nobody needs to invest in it either (there's nothing to invest in). EMI can just cease involvement and whoever currently owns the other half just gets on with it.

It's then entirely up to Universal-EMI to negotiate how much royalties it wants for allowing hits from its own roster to appear on NOW albums in future. So there's no reason to assume that Universal-EMI will end up worse off for abandoning its stake in NOW - instead of EMI getting half the net profits after paying royalties to all the other record labels (which no doubt includes Universal anyway)for using their songs, Universal-EMI gets the royalties up front and Virgin's residual profit share is correspondingly smaller.