Topic summary
Warner Music
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Warner Music Group.
2020s
Warner Music Group had planned an IPO of current investors' stock in March 2020, but withdrew its IPO just before the March 2 kick off due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On June 3, 2020, it completed its IPO on Nasdaq, raising almost $2 billion with a valuation of $12.75 billion, making WMG once again a publicly traded company after previously going private in 2011. On June 12, 2020, Tencent announced that it had purchased 10.4% of Warner Music's Class A shares, or 1.6% of the company. Tencent already owns 10% of shares of WMG's largest competitor, Universal Music Group, which it acquired from Vivendi in March. Also, this makes Sony Music the only major music company not directly owned in any percentage by a Chinese company (it is wholly owned by the Japanese conglomerate Sony).