No EMI Bonuses

Top execs at EMI lost out on the £41 million worth of bonuses they would have pocketed if U.S. banker Citigroup hadn’t stopped the payments.

Chief exec Roger Faxon and other senior execs had signed up to various incentive schemes that were introduced when Guy Hands’ Terra Firma took the company into private ownership in 2007.

The annual accounts published Jan. 4 indicate that Citi, which drove EMI into administration because it couldn’t repay its £3.2 billion debt, canceled the payments before any of the bonus money was paid out.

Filings at Companies House show that three bonus schemes Hands set up to motivate senior managers would have paid out £41 million, which would have fallen due when EMI was either sold or publicly listed.

Citi, which lost £2 billion by cutting EMI’s debt to £1.2 billion to get the company off its hands, appears to have felt that the circumstances of the sale didn’t justify the top execs getting productivity bonuses.

The figures also show that EMI revenues to March 31, 2011, fell to £1.45 billion, compared with the £1.65 billion it brought in during the previous year.

EBITDA fell from £333 million to £306 million, although that was more than the £298 million it made in 2009.

Earnings for the recorded music business, now owned by Universal, fell from £185 million to £169 million. The music publishing side, now owned by a syndicate headed by Sony ATV, saw earnings fall from £148 million to £137 million.