Lack
Schmidt-Holtz
Lack
NEW YORK -- By playing musical chairs with Andy Lack and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, Sony BMG is changing its vibe.
When he joined the company, Lack was an outsider...and a pure news man. Schmidt-Holtz, however, has held several roles within Bertelsmann and has had many lives...as a news man but also as a TV exec and a magazine man.
And another exec from the BMG side of the company, Tim Bowen, is expected to be named chief operating officer.
Sony and Bertelsmann are close to a deal, which will likely be signed within the next few days.
Lack, the former NBC exec who engineered the merger, will step aside from day-to-day management of the world's second-largest label and assume the role of non-executive chairman.
Schmidt-Holtz, former head of BMG, will become CEO of the joint venture and move to New York to manage it.
The job swap ends months of infighting between Lack and Schmidt-Holtz, as well as those loyal to Sony and BMG in a corporate drama that threatened to derail the joint venture just as the merger was complete.
Lack had engineered the difficult merger of the two companies but was disliked by some former BMG execs, who believed he was mismanaging the creative side of the biz.
Those execs were also upset at what they saw as a decidedly Sony tilt in the executive suite.
In a further concession to the Bertelsmann side, former BMG exec Bowen, director of its British and Canadian operations, is expected to be named chief operations officer of the company, replacing former BMG exec Michael Smellie, who left late last year.
From Sony's perspective, chief financial officer Kevin Kelleher was the obvious choice to replace Smellie, but the addition of another former BMG exec to the management team was a key deal point for Bertelsmann.
All three men -- Lack, Schmidt-Holtz and Bowen -- will sign multiyear employment deals as part of the agreement, which if approved, will be formally announced within a few days.
Resolution of the Sony BMG conflict had become a central concern for Stringer, and it came on the eve of the Grammys, where execs from both sides of the company gathered to honor artists like Columbia's John Legend and Bruce Springsteen (eight and five nominations, respectively), RCA's Foo Fighters (five noms) and Arista's Alicia Keys (five).
Going forward, it's unclear what Lack's role will be at the company beyond heading the board of directors, though he will likely handle government relations and continue to manage initiatives he spearheaded, such as the label's small-film division.
Deal to retain both executives came at the end of marathon talks between Bertelsmann chief exec Gunter Thielen and Stringer that occasionally included both Schmidt-Holtz and Lack but often did not.
Insiders said Stringer spent months meeting with BMG and Sony label execs and, over time, became more comfortable with the idea of turning over management to Schmidt-Holtz.
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