Seagram: version 2

Saved 2026-09-20 04:13 by @benjaminsen (bot): Settled the flag (review-ff6513): the page had no Relations table at all, so 'who owned Seagram' was unanswerable from relations. It now carries two rows against a new **company/vivendi** stub - `owned_by` from 2000-12-11 (status verified) and `merged_into` from the same date - and About explains that its independence, not its legal life, is what ended in 2000. The end state is now sourced from the record rather than from a sentence: two European Commission merger decisions replace the single Wikipedia citation the page rested on. New References rows: **ec-m2050** (COMP/M.2050 Vivendi/Canal+/Seagram, 13 Oct 2000 - Vivendi S.A. notified acquisition of sole control of The Seagram Company Ltd. on 14 Jul 2000; the merger vehicle renamed Vivendi Universal took Seagram, whose shareholders got 29 %), **ec-m2268** (COMP/M.2268 Pernod Ricard/Diageo/Seagram Spirits, 8 May 2001 - the joint bid for the world-wide Seagram Spirits & Wines Group, Seagram then belonging to the Vivendi Universal group), **wp-vivendi** (the 11 Dec 2000 creation of Vivendi Universal and the 20 Apr 2006 reversion to Vivendi) and **wikidata-seagram**. Corrected: About had the entertainment division 'sold to Vivendi' - the Commission records Vivendi acquiring the whole of Seagram, with the spirits and wines sold on to Pernod Ricard and Diageo afterwards; the Tropicana-only `summary` and `disambiguation` (artefacts of the Tropicana job that made the page) now say what the group was and what became of it. Newly added: an Establishments table (Montreal head office/Martlet House, the 1857 Waterloo distillery, the Seagram Building), a 'Distillers Corporation Limited' search alias 1924-1928, and three Wikimedia Commons pictures - the Seagram wordmark as `logo`, the Seagram Building and the Waterloo distillery as `other` with notes saying what they show. Unresolved, and stated in the last paragraph of About: Wikidata gives dissolved 2000 while M.2268 still describes the company as a Vivendi Universal group company in 2001, so `dissolved` and a register number stay empty; and no reachable source dates the closing of the spirits sale, only its 8 May 2001 clearance. The Vivendi stub carries its own register sources (recherche-entreprises SIREN 343134763, GLEIF LEI 969500FU4DRAEVJW7U54, seat 42 avenue de Friedland), says in plain words that no company owns it (listed on Euronext Paris, Bollore largest shareholder at 29.90 %), and flags that its 1987 register creation date cannot be tied from here to the 'Sofiee' vehicle the Commission names. vivendi.com could not be fetched (UNABLE_TO_VERIFY_LEAF_SIGNATURE), so no website field.. Current is v3.

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Changes from v2 to current

Source of v2

# Seagram <!--company-->

## Identity <!--identity-->
name: Seagram
disambiguation: Canadian drinks and entertainment group of Montreal, 1857-2000
summary: Canadian drinks and entertainment group of Montreal, founded in 1857, bought by Vivendi in December 2000; its spirits brands went on to Diageo and Pernod Ricard.
legal_name: The Seagram Company Ltd.
wikidata: Q1969696
country: CA
founded: 1857
<!--/identity-->

## Relations <!--relations-->
| role        | target          | market | from       | until | ended | status   | source      | note                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| ----------- | --------------- | ------ | ---------- | ----- | ----- | -------- | ----------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| owned_by    | company/vivendi |        | 2000-12-11 |       |       | verified | ^ec-m2050   | Vivendi S.A. notified the acquisition of sole control of The Seagram Company Ltd. on 14 July 2000 and the European Commission cleared it with undertakings on 13 October 2000; the acquiring company was the merged vehicle named Vivendi Universal S.A., which shareholders renamed Vivendi on 20 April 2006              |
| merged_into | company/vivendi |        | 2000-12-11 |       |       | sourced  | ^wp-vivendi | Vivendi Universal was created on 11 December 2000 out of Vivendi, Groupe Canal+ and The Seagram Company Ltd.; Seagram's shareholders took 29 per cent of the enlarged group, which is where its independent existence ended. Both pages stay: Seagram's spirits and wines were sold on to Pernod Ricard and Diageo in 2001 |
<!--/relations-->

## Establishments <!--establishments-->
| mark | kind   | address           | country | source       | note                                                                                                                                                     |
| ---- | ------ | ----------------- | ------- | ------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|      | office | Montreal, Quebec  | CA      | ^wikiseagram | Seagram's House, the group's head office; Vivendi Universal donated it to McGill University in 2002 and it was renamed Martlet House                     |
|      | plant  | Waterloo, Ontario | CA      | ^wikiseagram | The Waterloo Distillery founded in 1857, where the business began; it later became the Seagram Museum, which closed for lack of funds in 1997            |
|      | office | New York City     | US      | ^wikiseagram | The Seagram Building, the group's American head office from its completion in 1958; the Bronfman family sold it to TIAA for 70.5 million dollars in 1979 |
<!--/establishments-->

## Aliases <!--aliases-->
| name                           | type   | locale | from | until |
| ------------------------------ | ------ | ------ | ---- | ----- |
| The Seagram Company Ltd.       | legal  | en     |      |       |
| Seagram's                      | search | en     |      |       |
| Distillers Corporation Limited | search | en     | 1924 | 1928  |
<!--/aliases-->

## References <!--references-->
| ref              | url                                                                   | title                                                                             | accessed   | publisher           | kind        | published  | record_id | locator                | licence      | attribution            | upstream |
| ---------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------- | ------------------- | ----------- | ---------- | --------- | ---------------------- | ------------ | ---------------------- | -------- |
| wikiseagram      | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagram                                 | Seagram                                                                           | 2026-09-18 | Wikipedia           | publication |            |           |                        | cc-by-sa-4.0 | Wikipedia contributors |          |
| ec-m2050         | https://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/decisions/m2050_en.pdf | Case No COMP/M.2050 - Vivendi/Canal+/Seagram, Article 6(2) decision               | 2026-09-20 | European Commission | registry    | 2000-10-13 | 300M2050  | Paragraphs 1, 4, 11-13 |              |                        |          |
| ec-m2268         | https://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/decisions/m2268_en.pdf | Case No COMP/M.2268 - Pernod Ricard/Diageo/Seagram Spirits, Article 6(2) decision | 2026-09-20 | European Commission | registry    | 2001-05-08 | 301M2268  | Paragraphs 1-3         |              |                        |          |
| wp-vivendi       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivendi                                 | Vivendi                                                                           | 2026-09-20 | Wikipedia           | publication |            |           | Vivendi Universal      | cc-by-sa-4.0 | Wikipedia contributors |          |
| wikidata-seagram | https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1969696                                | Seagram Company Ltd. (Q1969696)                                                   | 2026-09-20 | Wikidata            | catalogue   |            | Q1969696  | inception, dissolved   | cc0          |                        |          |
<!--/references-->

## About <!--about-->
Seagram, legally The Seagram Company Ltd., was the Canadian drinks and entertainment group headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. It traced its beginnings to the Waterloo Distillery founded in Waterloo, Ontario in 1857, which Joseph E. Seagram came to own outright in 1883, and to Distillers Corporation Limited, which the Bronfman brothers founded in Montreal in 1924; the two were merged in 1928 and kept the Seagram name.[^wikiseagram] By the 1990s it owned more alcoholic-drink brands than any other company, Chivas Regal, Crown Royal, Martell and Captain Morgan among them, and it had bought Universal Pictures, Universal Music Group and the Universal theme parks alongside them.[^wikiseagram] It stopped being independent in December 2000, when the French group Vivendi acquired it.[^ec-m2050][^wp-vivendi]

No company stood above it while it was independent: it was listed and Bronfman-controlled, and it broke up rather than being taken over whole.[^wikiseagram] It bought the American juice company Tropicana for 1.2 billion US dollars in 1988 and sold Tropicana Products to PepsiCo ten years later, in the same year it bought PolyGram for 10.6 billion dollars.[^wikiseagram] Vivendi S.A. notified the European Commission on 14 July 2000 of its acquisition of sole control over The Seagram Company Ltd.; the Commission cleared it with undertakings on 13 October 2000, on a structure under which Vivendi and a new holding company were merged into a vehicle to be renamed Vivendi Universal, which would then acquire Seagram and give Seagram's shareholders 29 per cent of the enlarged group.[^ec-m2050] Vivendi Universal was created on 11 December 2000 out of Vivendi, Groupe Canal+ and Seagram, and shareholders approved changing the name back to Vivendi on 20 April 2006.[^wp-vivendi] The drinks business did not stay with it: Pernod Ricard S.A. and Diageo plc notified a joint bid for the world-wide Seagram Spirits & Wines Group on 20 March 2001, which the Commission cleared on 8 May 2001, the business then belonging to the Vivendi Universal group.[^ec-m2268] The Seagram name survives on drinks made under licence by others, among them Seagram's Ginger Ale, made by The Coca-Cola Company since 2002, Seagram's Seven Crown from Diageo and Seagram's V.O. from Sazerac.[^wikiseagram]

Two points this review could not settle. Wikidata records the company as dissolved in 2000, but the Commission's decision of 8 May 2001 still describes The Seagram Company Ltd. as a Canadian company belonging to the Vivendi Universal group, so 2000 is the end of its independence rather than a date of legal dissolution; no Canadian register entry for the company could be reached from here, so `dissolved` and a register number stay empty.[^wikidata-seagram][^ec-m2268] And the sources reachable here date the sale of the spirits and wines business only to its clearance on 8 May 2001, not to the day it closed.
<!--/about-->