Doug Morris' words carry weight in the music world.

In the course of his career, the now 82-year-old American was at the top of all three of today's industry giants Warner, Sony and Universal Music.

One remark about his successor at the Universal top, Lucian Grainge, is correspondingly persistent.

Deceptively harmless, this one looks with his cute little face and narrow glasses, "but behind it is actually a killer shark".

Benjamin Fischer

Editor in business.

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This same Grainge took over the reins in January 2011, while Morris hired a few months later as Sony Music boss.

Back then, today's rosy prospects and the investor run for music rights seemed very far away.

But a sober comparison of figures shows how well the "killer shark" from London got Universal out of the crisis and adapted to the new, primarily digital world of music: In mid-2013, the parent company Vivendi is said to have rejected a takeover offer from Softbank amounting to 6.5 billion euros to have.

In the course of the latest share sale in the run-up to the IPO planned for September, Universal was now valued at 35 billion euros - and some analysts still see considerable room for improvement.

The now 61-year-old manager can also understand this as an assessment of his own work.

The bet with EMI worked out very well

At the end of the 1970s, when the young Grainge cavorted in the legendary London punk scene, where The Clash and the Sex Pistols grew up, business was still different. However, he got an insight early on through his father, who owned several record stores, and his brother, a label manager. All of this obviously left a lasting impression: Immediately after school in 1979, he hired a music publisher in the area of ​​“Artist & Repertoire” (A&R) - responsible for looking for new trends, talents and supporting them. The rock band Psychedelic Furs was his first catch. After building up the British publishing division of the music company Polygram from 1986, which was merged into what is now the Universal Music Group in 1999, he switched to the label side in 1993.By managing the British Universal branch and, from 2005, the entire business outside the USA, he ultimately moved to the top of the world's largest music company.

As Morris' successor, he is said to have been established for a long time.

There were of course various success stories on his business card: the rise of Amy Winehouse, the Take That comeback or the lure of the Rolling Stones from EMI.

For the great Arsenal London fan and his family, the move to America went hand in hand with it.

Instead of running Universal like Morris from New York, Grainge decided at short notice in Los Angeles, the headquarters of many important Universal groups, but above all closer to the tech giants.

The right place to bring the music business to digital.

Grainge was also one of those who was convinced early on by Spotify and the streaming model, which recently brought the music recording market its sixth year of growth in a row.

Vivendi always gave him a relatively free hand

The streaming boom is not least a catalog boom. In a world where almost all music can be streamed permanently, works that are years or decades old continue to bring in money without significant new investments. Against this background, the takeover of the EMI label division was perhaps Grainge's masterpiece. For $ 1.9 billion, Universal secured the rights to the Beatles' recordings in 2012, among other things. A lot of money at a time when the industry was deeply in crisis due to piracy. Especially since competition watchdogs also had the sale of the Coldplay label Parlophone.

But Grainge did not want to let the chance of reaching for the British music icon slip by. "That was Lucian's first brilliant coup as Universal boss," said Thomas Hesse, then Sony Music Manager, in an interview with the FAZ. Sony was about to make up ground at that time. But with the "essence of the EMI business, Universal's market leadership in the recorded market was cemented". Grainge is still happy to discard how many people thought the purchase was a bad idea at the time - and how he once again had the right nose.