PolyGram

About PolyGram

PolyGram N.V. was the Dutch record and entertainment group that held Deutsche Grammophon, Polydor, Phonogram, Mercury, Decca, Island and A&M. Philips and Siemens & Halske founded it in 1962, when Philips Phonografische Industrie merged with Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft to form the Grammophon-Philips Group, each parent holding half; it was renamed PolyGram in 1972, after the Siemens interest Polydor Records and the Philips interest Phonogram Records, and traced its own line through Deutsche Grammophon back to Emile Berliner, the inventor of the flat disc gramophone.^[1][2] The German half passed to Siemens AG on 1 October 1966, when Siemens & Halske was merged into it,^[3] and Siemens sold the last of its interest in 1987;^[4] Philips then held the group alone until it floated a minority on the Amsterdam exchange in 1989, and sold PolyGram to the Canadian drinks and entertainment group Seagram in 1998.^[2][1]

Philips announced the sale on 22 May 1998, and the European Commission cleared it on 21 September 1998, recording PolyGram N.V. as a subsidiary of Philips N.V. of which The Seagram Company Ltd. would acquire the whole; PolyGram's 1997 world-wide turnover was ECU 5,019 million against Seagram's ECU 10,183 million.^[5] Philips Electronics held 75 per cent of the listed company in 1997, and PolyGram's shares traded in Amsterdam and New York.^[6] Philips' legal name at the time was Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.^[2] The deal closed on 10 December 1998: the music operations went into Universal Music Group, while the film and television business was broken up, the pre-1996 film library going to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the domestic film division to USA Networks.^[2] Among the assets that passed with the sale was PolyGram's compact-disc plant at Kings Mountain, North Carolina.^[7] Seagram itself ceased to exist on 11 December 2000, when its entertainment business became part of Vivendi Universal.^[8] Vivendi Universal's annual report on Form 20-F, filed in July 2001, lists PolyGram N.V., organised under Dutch law, among its subsidiaries.^[9] Universal Music Group revived the name in February 2017 for its film and television arm, PolyGram Entertainment.^[2]

Two company histories agree on the year the Siemens holding ended. Deutsche Grammophon's own account says Siemens sold 40 per cent of its half share in PolyGram International to Philips at the end of 1984 and that Philips bought the remaining 10 per cent in 1987.^[4] The International Directory of Company Histories gives the same two steps, dating the 40 per cent to 1985 and the last 10 per cent to 1987, after which Philips owned the company completely.^[6] The Wikipedia article on PolyGram carries that sequence too, but in a later passage dates the purchase of a remaining 50 per cent to 1988, while the Wikipedia article on Deutsche Grammophon gives 1987.^[2][10] The two histories differ on the first tranche, which one puts at the end of 1984 and the other in 1985.^[4][6]