SONY SEEKING ROLF REPLACEMENT
Current CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, whose current five-year deal runs through next March, splits his time between Germany and the U.S., and Sony management is looking for a chief who will be based fulltime in the States, these sources told media reporter Claire Atkinson, adding that the company hasn’t ruled out keeping Schmidt-Holtz in charge.
Sony Music has been on a roll of late, posting increased profits for the year ended March 31 and upping its Y-T-D marketshare to 28.3% from 26.5%.
The German exec's critics say the improvement came mostly on sales of the Michael Jackson catalog following his death and the success of Susan Boyle, not through any grand plan—an assessment mirroring that of our own I.B. Bad in his latest column, posting Friday morning.
"He's just not engaged," one music industry insider familiar with the situation told Atkinson, further claiming that without mega-sales from Jackson and Boyle, things would have been “terrible.”
Rumors of Schmidt-Holtz' departure have been rampant the past few weeks following a recent interview in the N.Y. Times. When asked about his future at the company, he’d said, "I'm here until I'm not here and I love what I'm doing."
Schmidt-Holtz, who made just under $10 million last year, didn’t respond to Atkinson’s request for comment, while a SME spokesman had no comment.
The list of possible replacements floated by Atkinson is a short one indeed: usual suspects Rob Stringer and Barry Weiss. I.B. has his own thoughts on the matter, as you’ll see tomorrow morning.
