Galbraith Waits On Return Date

Stuart Galbraith is no wiser about exactly when he’ll return to the live music business after an October 10th High Court hearing was adjourned to enable him to try to reach a compromise with former employer Live Nation.

He had hoped to announce he was returning to work in cahoots with AEG at an October 3rd press conference, but that was scrapped when LN got a High Court injunction less than 24 hours before the event.

Live Nation told the court that appearing at the press conference and working with AEG or any other promoter would put Galbraith in breach of his LN contract.

The Outside Organisation, which set up the press call and also looks after AEG Live U.K.’s public relations, arranged for about a dozen journalists from music trade and business publications to have one-on-one interviews with the former Live Nation U.K. managing director. But it was forced to scrap the event when it could no longer deliver the person it had invited the writers to meet.

Outside Organisation managing director Penny McDonald said the conference would be rescheduled in seven days, but the legal tangle has made that impossible.

The five-day injunction that stopped the press conference ran out October 10th, but the High Court adjourned that day’s hearing to give both sides time to work out a compromise.

The next hearing was slotted for October 12th, when the lawyers may have had time to agree on how long the restricted covenant in Galbraith’s LN contract should be allowed to run.

AEG and Live Nation, two Los Angeles-based global live music giants, are already at odds with each other in Europe.

They’ve tangled a couple of times lately, including when David Maloney left Stockholm-based EMA Telstar – the centre of Live Nation’s Nordic operations – and started a new Swedish office for AEG.