Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl has previously hinted that his company is keen to increase its presence in various important sectors of the music business through acquisition.
Now, he has found the executive to lead that mission.
Widely respected executive Michael Ryan-Southern is leaving Goldman Sachs, joining Warner Music Group to lead all M&A activity at the global music giant.
At Warner, he will assume the newly created position of Executive Vice President, Corporate Development, from August.
With 20 years of experience in finance, the executive has been involved in numerous significant growth, equity sales and acquisitions in the music business.
He leaves behind his role as Global Head of Music and Live Entertainment Banking Investments at Goldman Sachs, which he joined in 2021.
Prior to joining Goldman in 2021, Michael Ryan-Southern spent eight years in senior management positions across a number of portfolio companies of Mubadala Capital and Mubadala Investment Company.
The executive worked for six years in EMI Music Publishingnearly three of which were spent as Deputy CFO (between January 2016 and November 2018).
In that position at EMI, he was instrumental in the sale of EMI Music Publishing to Sony Corporation, in a deal that valued EMI Music Publishing at 4.75 billion dollars.
During that process, he worked closely with the selling side on that EMI/Sony deal, Capital Mubadala.
After leaving EMI in November 2018, Ryan-Southern served as President and CEO of Hakkasan Group (an asset owned by Mubadala) between 2018 and 2020, and served as CFO of REEF (also an asset owned by Mubadala) in 2021, before joining Goldman Sachs as a Managing Director.
Prior to EMI, he spent over eight years at KPMG.
News of this key hire at Warner comes shortly after WMG entered discussions to potentially acquire Paris-based music label Believe, before retreating from any possible agreement.
In WMG’s calendar Q1 (fiscal Q2) earnings call, the company’s management team emphasized that, despite not doing a deal for Believe, the company continues to seek further M&A opportunities.
“It is our duty to observe the market. And if there [are] opportunities that will accelerate our initiatives, we will take them,” said WMG’s CFO, Bryan Castellani.
In his opening remarks on the same earnings call, WMG CEO Robert Kyncl noted that WMG is “remaining vigilant about our M&A opportunities, which could accelerate our capabilities.”
Later in the call, in response to analyst Benjamin Black’s question about “where Strategic M&A fits in [WMG’s] capital distribution hierarchy now,” said Robert Kyncl: “We have a clear strategy in expanding our offerings to serve more artists in a a wider range of their careers. And we’re building against that. We have our team working really hard, building all the right features we need.
He added: “We’re always looking at ways to speed things up because all this work takes time. Whenever there is an option in the market that allows us to accelerate our roadmaps, we will look at it.”
Meanwhile, an internal memo sent to the company’s global team in January may have included a hint of where the company might look to invest.
On January 8, at an internal memo taken by MBW, Robert Kyncl highlighted three key areas he said WMG will focus on in 2024, including increasing engagement with music; enhancing the value of music and evolving how WMG employees work together.
As part of his plan to “increase engagement with music,” Kyncl wrote that there will be a greater focus on “distribution and stewardship.”
Kyncl also explained that WMG is “building scalable and highly effective distribution infrastructure so that we can scale radically and with great efficiency.”middle class‘ of artists, while our front-line labels can remain focused on artists with the highest potential.”
The worldwide music business