Thorn EMI Shareholders Agree to Split Firm in Two

LONDON — Thorn EMI shareholders voted Friday to approve splitting the company into two parts: the lucrative EMI music studio and the Thorn appliance rental business.

Speculation that the previously announced plan to split the company would make EMI a takeover candidate has prompted sharp jumps in Thorn EMI shares in the last year. But company Chairman Colin Southgate said Friday that he hasn’t had talks on EMI’s music business since last year.

“I haven’t talked to anyone who is on your [the media’s] special interest list from October of last year--September or October,” Southgate said after the shareholders meeting.

He said his response to those expressing interest has been: “I said to them, ‘We’re going to de-merge the business.’ It’s up to them to make an offer.”

Southgate declined to say whom he talked to last year.

Friday’s shareholder vote came a year after the company announced plans for the breakup and more than a decade after Southgate assumed the helm at Thorn EMI in 1985. Since then, Thorn EMI has shed more than 100 businesses, changing from a sprawling electronics conglomerate into two well-defined businesses.

“Over the past decade, Thorn EMI has undergone a far-reaching transformation,” Southgate told shareholders who voted overwhelmingly to approve the split. The split will take effect on Monday, when EMI Group and Thorn will trade separately on the London Stock Exchange.

EMI is one of the world’s largest music companies with a strong roster of recording artists and a valuable music publishing business. Its artists include the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Janet Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Garth Brooks and Smashing Pumpkins. It also owns the HMV music and Dillons bookstore chains.

Thorn rents appliances, personal computers and other products.

Southgate said he expects the two companies will be well-valued by the stock market but that it may take longer for the unique value of Thorn to be recognized.

Entertainment companies that might have an interest in EMI include the MCA unit of Seagram Co., Walt Disney Co., Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Viacom Inc. and the fledgling DreamWorks studio, analysts have said.