Warner Music Group Shareholders Approve Merger

Len Blavatnik

Dave M. Benett/VF1/WireImage

Warner Music Group shareholders approved the sale of the company to Russian mogul Len Blavatnik and his holding company Access Industries for $3.3 billion. In a statement, Warner Music said that the company expects the merger with Access to be complete by the third quarter of 2011.

Photos: Random Notes

News of this acquisition has not been met with great enthusiasm by some Warner Music shareholders. A few of them filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in May claiming that chairman and CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. and its board of directors breached their fiduciary duty by accepting Blavatnik's offer over a higher bid from billionaire brothers Tom and Alec Gores. This suit has not yet been resolved.

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter