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EMI shareholders OK deal
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June 26, 2000: 8:32 a.m. ET
As regulatory probes loom, music publisher accepts $20B Warner alliance
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LONDON (CNNfn) - Shareholders of British music company EMI Group PLC accepted Monday plans to form a $20 billion joint venture with U.S.-based Warner Music Group that will create the world's biggest music company.
EMI Chairman Eric Nicoli said proxy shareholders representing more than 442 million shares voted by more than 99 percent in favor of the deal. The combined Warner EMI Music will house such talent as Warner Music artists Phil Collins and REM along with EMI's Spice Girls, Janet Jackson, Garth Brooks, the Beatles and Smashing Pumpkins.
However the deal still faces scrutiny from European and U.S. regulators. The  European Union recently announced it would undertake an extended investigation of the planned tie-up on the grounds it could harm competition.
The shareholder vote came amid a last-minute flurry of speculation that a bidder might step in to thwart the deal between EMI, one of Britain's last major publicly traded music publishers, and Warner Music. The U.S. company is a unit of Time Warner Inc (TWX: Research, Estimates), which is also the parent of CNNfn.
Executives in the music industry, and those at Warner and EMI, have been upbeat about the prospects for companies that can deliver their products in digital form via the Internet. However, the Web also brings a threat from MP3, a technology that the mainstream music industry says facilitates online piracy of copyrighted products.
Shares of EMI (EMI) rose 5 percent to 661 pence shortly after the announcement on Monday. 
-- from staff and wire reports
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