Will ex-ITV boss Allen hit right note at EMI?

By SIMON DUKE FOR MAILONLINE
Updated: 17:37 EST, 10 March 2010

Former ITV boss Charles Allen is taking the helm at EMI after the crisis-hit home to the Beatles and Lily Allen dumped its chief executive just weeks before make-or-break talks with investors.

The unceremonious departure of Elio Leoni-Sceti stunned the music industry and comes as a raft of its top acts, such as Pink Floyd and Queen, are threatening to quit the record company.

The former marketing executive at Cillit Bang-maker Reckitt Benckiser insisted that he was leaving of his own accord after a year and a half in the job.

In the pink: Unlike Lily Allen, above, EMI looks decidedly off-colour

Just weeks after the label reported a £1.5bn loss for the 2009 financial year, Leoni-Sceti said: 'My job here is now done and it's time to move on.'

But for many in the music industry, the timing of the switch was hugely significant.

Just weeks ago EMI's private equity owner, Guy Hands, instructed the Italian to formulate a new turnaround plan for debt-laden EMI.

This new roadmap was to be the centrepiece of upcoming talks with talks with investors in Hands' Terra Firma vehicle, who are being asked to pump yet more cash into the group.

Unless investors stump up a further £120m by June, EMI could fall into the hands of Wall Street giant Citigroup, which bankrolled his £4.2bn takeover of the label in 2007.

Hands has already written off some £2bn of the value of the deal, which has come to symbolise the worst excesses of the buyout boom.

The private equity tycoon and Citigroup are now locked in a bitter legal dispute, with Hands alleging that Citigroup gulled him into paying over the odds for EMI at the height of the buyout boom.

The ousting of Leoni-Sceti marks a dramatic return to the chief executive ranks for Allen, who's been non-executive chairman at EMI for over a year.

When Allen left ITV in 2007, his reputation was not exactly unblemished. His successor Michael Grade struggled to revitalise the tired on-screen line-up Allen had left him. The broadcaster is also set to lose around £150m on its takeover of Friends Reunited, which was the central plank in Allen's online strategy.

Allen, however, was best known for creating ITV through the merger of Carlton and Granada.