Guy Hands starts a fresh court salvo to regain EMI
TERRA Firma chief Guy Hands has launched a second legal attempt to claw music group EMI back from the hands of its lender Citigroup, it emerged yesterday.
Hands is understood to have filed a High Court suit against EMI’s adviser PwC to make it produce the evidence it used to propose the pre-pack administration that handed EMI back to Citi.
A preliminary hearing was held yesterday as PwC refused to hand the report over to Hands’ private equity house Terra Firma, as it contains commercially sensitive information.
“PwC was charged with solving the situation at EMI for all stakeholders, it was a standard procedure,” one source familiar with the situation told City A.M. “Since then, Terra Firma has been trying to get hold of the information, particularly the valuation information for EMI.”
The move is Hands’ latest salvo in an acrimonious battle with Citi over EMI, and his second attempt to use the courts to recoup damages from Terra Firma’s disastrous investment in the company. Hands bought EMI for £4.2bn in 2007 using £2.6bn of Citi debt, but took the bank to court last year claiming he was tricked into paying far over the odds for EMI.