Scandal-hit firm shuts premier store

The firm is shaking up its instrument making operation

A cost control campaign prompted by a financial scandal is prompting one of the most famous names in classical music to close the doors at one of the UK's premier music stores.

Boosey & Hawkes, the high-ranking instrument maker and owner of rights to works by Stravinsky and Strauss and Rachmaninoff, is to sell the lease to its London shop which since it was opened in the 1930s has become a "musical landmark".

The store is set to reopen at at "modern premises", a statement said.

Shareholders on Monday agreed to the £9.3m sale as part of a drive to shore up B&H following the discovery of "a series of fundamentally incorrect and highly misleading" accounting entries at the US subsidiary Boosey & Hawkes Musical Instruments (BHMI).

The firm dismissed some BHMI directors, and investigated legal action, over the "fundamental errors", which prompted the firm to make a £15.4m write-down.

The store sale comes in a shake-up involving boardroom changes, moves to sell a factory making brass and woodwind instruments, and the ending of a legal case against Disney.

Boosey to booze

The London store, in Regent Street, boasts the largest selection of printed music in the UK, Boosey & Hawkes claims.

But the poor condition of the building, located in a prime central London area, has prompted directors to investigate selling its lease on the site and moving elsewhere, a move which will release capital to appease debtors caught out by the BHMI debacle.

"Directors believe that the group would be best served by realising the value inherent in the site and relocating operations to modern premises," Monday's statement said.

The lease to the site, which B&H will control until the end of next June, has been sold to drinks giant Diageo.

Disney case settled

The sale follows B&H's acceptance of $3m from film giants The Walt Disney Company and Buena Vista International in an out-of-court settlement over the use of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in the home video of Fantasia.

And the disposal comes a month after Boosey & Hawkes unveiled proposals for raising up to £15.6m through the sale of a five-acre instrument factory site in north London to housing firm McLean Homes, an arm of Wimpey.

Work from the factory, which makes brass instruments for Britain's best-known orchestras and colliery bands, is being transferred to plants in Watford and eastern Germany.

The north London site was opened in 1925 to house 1,000 workers, but has in recent times accommodated only 200, and fallen into disrepair.

Share revival

The shake-up at Boosey & Hawkes, which has also seen top managers deployed to BHMI and the appointment of a new group finance director, is one of the most wide-ranging in the firm's history.

It has sparked a revival in investor interest in the firm's shares, which closed at 170p on Monday, almost double their 90p closing price on 12 December.

The shares in August 1997 closed at 1007.5p.

B&H traces its roots back to the founding of Boosey & Company in the 1760s, and has since grown through the acquisition of instrument makers such as Hofner and Bote & Beck.

The firm in the 1930s began in earnest to acquire copyrights to famous works, reckoning that the advent of radio spelled disaster to the printed music trade.

The B&H catalogue includes titles ranging from Victorian ballads to the Colonel Bogey March, made famous in the film Bridge over the River Kwai, as well as works by 20th century composers such as Britten, Bartok and Prokofieff.