This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Live Business
Business as usual says AEG chief, despite sale
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 21 September 2012
The boss of AEG has told Billboard that the sale of his company by current owners Anschutz should have very little effect on the operations of the entertainment giant.
Following confirmation from the Anschutz Company earlier this week that it was planning to sell AEG in the next year, with a rumoured asking price of $7 billion, Tim Leiweke told the US music industry magazine: “People act like this is going to be some seismic earthquake within our company and it won’t be. We won’t miss a beat”.
Insisting the decision of Anschutz, and its owner Philip Anschutz, was not a surprise, Leiweke added: “We have come to a point where it’s important to find the next phase for AEG and the next owner for AEG, because [Anschutz] is 73 years old, and he does want to go through some planning and a different phase of his life, and I completely respect that. We’ve always operated under the understanding that this was an equity investment, and I’d have to cooperate with him to get an exit strategy. That’s all this is”.
And in the meantime, its business as usual now, and beyond any ownership change, the CEO reckons, concluding: “The reality is the management team here has been the same management team since we started this. I hired these people, I brought them together, we’ve had very little change here. I have the same people I’ve had all along in this process. Everyone’s re-upped, everyone’s committed long term, And, with all due respect to Mr Anschutz, the people that run this thing day-to-day are not going anywhere, and we’re still as committed”.
