NEAR TRUTHS:
BURNT OFFERINGS

Will Tanous, who by all accounts has proven invaluable to shepherding UMG to market, had prior experience with an IPO—under very different circumstances.

Tanous was a player in WMG’s going public during the Edgar Bronfman Jr./Thomas H. Lee era. The year was 2005, the business had been in the post-Napster doldrums for several years and iTunes had just opened. The offering put Warner’s market cap at $2.4b. In 2011, after more bleak years, Len Blavatnik shrewdly forked over a tidy $3.3b for the label group. That now looks like a rather keen investment given that WMG’s market cap at present is $23.7b.