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Sony
This snapshot deals with Sony,
the only Japanese consumer electronics giant that has
made a successful move into global content production
and distribution.
It covers -
introduction
Sales in the FY ended
March 2001 were US$58.5 billion. The group at that time
had around 1,000 subsidiaries and 181,800 employees worldwide.
In 2006 sales were US$63.5 billion, with income of US$1.05
billion. The group at that time had 158,700 employees.
In
September 2004 Sony led a consortium (inc Providence Equity
Partners, Texas Pacific Group and DLJ Merchant Banking
Partners) that confirmed an in principle agreement to
acquire Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (MGM)
for US$5 billion.
In April 2007 Sony/ATV Music Publishing - Sony's joint
venture with Michael Jackson acquired the Stoller &
Leiber music catalogue for a reported US$40 million, followed
by agreement in May 2007 that it would buy Viacom's Famous
Music unit (rights to some 125,000 songs) for US$370 million
Overall the group
has some 1,000 subsidiaries and affiliates worldwide,
including retail operations and a line of cosmetics; around
a third are unrelated to the core electronics businesses.
In Japan it has three financial units (Sony Life Insurance,
nonlife insurer Sony Assurance and Sony Bank) which earned
US$1.7 billion in 2005.
studies
The outstanding study is
John Nathan's Sony: The Private Life (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin 1999), superseding Nick Lyons' The Sony Vision
(New York: Crown 1976).
Simon Partner's Assembled In Japan: Electrical Goods
& The Making Of The Japanese Consumer (Berkeley:
Uni of California Press 1999) is concentrates on the early
history, as does Bob Johnstone's We Were Burning: Japanese
Entrepreneurs & The Forging of the Electronic Age
(New York: Basic Books 1999).
Co-founder Akio Morita's memoir Made In Japan: Akio
Morita & Sony (New York: Dutton 1986) is thin,
as is Reiji Asakura's Revolutionaries at Sony: The
Making of the Sony Playstation & The Visionaries Who
Conquered the World of Video Games (New York: McGraw
Hill 2000).
Norman Lebrecht's
mordant When The Music Stops (New York: Simon &
Schuster 1996) and Maestros,
Masterpieces & Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful
Death of the Classical Record Industry (London: Allen
Lane 2007) are accounts
of Sony's move into music recording; particular strong
on classical music. Fredric Dannen's Hit Men:
Power Brokers & Fast Money Inside The Music Business
(New York: Vintage 1991) is an acerbic expose of its adventures
in the contemporary music business.
Hit & Run: How Jon Peters & Peter Guber Took Sony
for A Ride In Hollywood (New York: Touchstone 1997)
is an expose by Nancy Griffin of how the guys from Tokyo
handed over Columbia Pictures to "Barbra Streisand's
hairdresser".
David Geffen's profiled in Stephen Singular's The Rise
& Rise of David Geffen (New York: Birch Lane 1997),
Tom King's more substantial David Geffen: A Biography
Of New Hollywood (London: Hutchinson 2000) and Fred
Goodman's The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen,
Springsteen & the Head-on Collision of Rock &
Commerce (New York: Times 1997).
There are other perspectives in Columbia Pictures:
Portrait of a Studio (Lexington: Uni Press of Kentucky
1992) edited by Bernard Dick and his The Merchant Prince
of Poverty Row: Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures
(Lexington: Uni Press of Kentucky 1993). Fast Fade:
David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the Battle for Hollywood
(New York: Delacorte Press 1989) by Andrew Yule covers
the momentary Putnam invasion.
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