Lord Lloyd-Webber mounts $200mln bid for ‘The Sound of Music’

spanfont face="Arial"British composer Lord Lloyd-Webber is trying to mount a 200 million dollars-plus bid for lsquo;The Sound of Musicrsquo;, and other Broadway musicals written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. /font/span p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"nbsp;/font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"Others who are in the race for the catalogue are EMI and Sony/ATV, ABP, the Dutch pension fund that owns Boosey amp; Hawkes, while Universal Music, the market leader, and The Walt Disney Company believe that the asking price is too high, Times Online reported. /font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"nbsp;/font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"Lord Lloyd-Webberrsquo;s interest in stretching his West End empire across the Atlantic is because The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organisation (Ramp;H) represents his works in America, a position which gives him some leverage over the outcome. /font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"nbsp;/font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"Included in it is a change of control clause, which allows him to take back his works from Ramp;H, where a meaningful, but unspecified proportion of the group''s turnover is represented. /font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"nbsp;/font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"Ramp;H had been established more than 60 years ago as a producer for Rodgers and Hammerstein''s own works, and it includes South Pacific, The King and I and Oklahoma! /font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"nbsp;/font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"Oscar Hammerstein, the lyricist, died in 1960, and Richard Rodgers, the composer, in 1979. /font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"nbsp;/font/span/p p align="justify"spanfont face="Arial"Ramp;H stakes are being controlled by a family trust, but now the company is up for sale as its key shareholders, Mary Rodgers Guettel and Alice Hammerstein Mathias, the men''s daughters - are ageing and the families want to explore whether it is worth cashing out. (ANI)/font/span/p

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