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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
Sony is the only
Japanese consumer electronics giant that has made a successful
move into global content production and distribution.
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.
A chronology of the group is here.
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.
Later in the year Sony floated Sony Financial Holdings,
its insurance and banking arm, in an IPO that saw the
parent sell 34.5% of its Sony Finance shares and gain
US$2.7 billion.
Holdings
The following
page provides an indication of
Sony holdings. It is an electronics, content, services
and financial conglomerate.
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). For us it was more insightful than
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.
next page (Sony
holdings)
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