What does this mean ? ? ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/arts/music/notes-of-sorrow-in-changes-at-steinway.html

Steinway sold to a holding company ? ? ?

For a measly 438M ?

10 Million piano lovers chip in $ 100.00 bucks. Hmmmm ?

The piano community needs to ponder what this all means.

Lorenzo Lacovara

I think it means Steinway was sold to a holding company.

I agree with you about the valuation of $438M, though. I would have thought the brand to be worth far more than that.

Lorenzo,

There is much discussion of the potential sale in the Piano Forum. You might want to check out those threads.

Will do.

Thx

People and powers that be will put whatever spin they like on the sale. This is what happens when over - regulation finally takes its toll on business owners in this country. I'm sure the owners of Steinway were pretty sick of not being able to make a profit and or paying insane use tax on raw material which is why most manufacturing companies move oveseas. When you see a huge plant and see all the stuff laying around, wood, screws, glue etc everything you see is taxed, it is similar to real estate tax and it goes up every year.

Lots of people work at the Steinway plant. Some have been there 20 - 30 years with a great job but imagine getting hammered each year with more rules sucking money from your pocket. I am quite shocked they made it this long.

Certain states are worse than others and it almost always can be related to which states have the highest sales tax rates. Higher sales tax means more regulation and business tax to compensate which in turn hammers business out of business. Until these states learn that then there will be no real jobs anywhere.

A recent example would be the Nashville farmers market. Which are just hobby farmers trying to hash out a living, until June 1 when they got hammered with the new small farmers tax. The result ? An empty farmers market on a weekend

Only little people worry about taxes.

Companies get bought and sold all the time. To the consumer, it means little. I think Steinway has been bought and sold four or five times in my lifetime. So has Mason & Hamlin. Charles Walter was Janssen before it was bought by the current owner.

Maybe Michele Bachmann will buy S&S.

Yah, it will be great when we get back to the good old days before workplace regulation of 12YO girls building piano action parts instead of attending school. Love those nimble fingers!

We are getting the government we deserve mostly because the money to get elected comes from people and groups with specific interests that they put ahead of the ones the majority of the people have identified. If we funded campaigns via tax revenue our representatives would be far more likely to follow the peoples will because they got elected on the peoples money. Everybody hates taxes. GE hates them so much they have paid very little for many years. They do make great jet engines!

"... it announced that it was planning to sell the whole company to a private-equity firm that owns more than 15 other medium-size manufacturers, making everything from windshield wipers to sewing machines to coffins..."

During WWII, Steinway--- barred from using war materiel to manufacture pianos--- made not-very-good gliders, designed for a single-use, one-way trip to deliver soldiers behind the lines. After the war, they used their stockpile of fine, seasoned wood to make coffins.

Times were hard.

Steinway made glider parts, not full gliders. Probably some of the best wood in the sky when it was from the Steinway stash. We shouldn't forget the 2,436 Victory Verticals (G.I. Pianos) for the war effort. The coffins were also for the use of the military. They biggest problem was that Steinway was low on seasoned wood for piano building at the end of the war.

Greetings,
I was under the impression that Steinway made the glider's main wing spars out of the highest grade spruce available. My family supplied wood to the government in WWII (90 ft long pine keels for wooden mine-sweepers) and I have seen how particular they war boards were inre materials. I would assume that the piano factory had some of the most experienced people to work with spruce and I bet they had the finest wood there was.
I say this because I have worked with a B from 1946 that has the most perfect board in it I have seen. It was an RCA broadcast piano in New York until they opened a studio in Nashville in the 1950's. The piano is probably on more hits than any in town, from Elvis's sessions, to virtually all the classics of the Cline/Reeves/Arnold/etc era. Floyd Kramer used it to record "Last Date". It has an incredible response, and the grains in the soundboard are the same from one side to the other. Perfectly straight and regular, I have always suspected that that board was made with left-over stock from their war effort. Nobody would have used musical grade spruce to build a coffin with, I dont' think.
Regards,

I wonder how much Yamaha bought bosendorfer for .

Does anyone know?

If memory serves, I think it was around 14 million Euros, which was probably under 20 million US at the time. Bösendorfer was, I believe, running a deficit of about 2 million per year back then,

Yes. And Baldwin was also supplying parts for gliders, as well. In fact, I understand that their pinblock development emerged from research that happened during the war effort.

I'd chip in $100. People do that around here to own a piece of the GB Packers.

But no need to get into a panic stampede. Steinway has been sold twice before.

That Steinway has weathered many storms and still emerged a leader on the concert stage is quite a feat when you think about it. Hopefully, the company will emerge stronger from the current change.

I hope someone will create a sample library of this piano. I'm surprised that no one has, really.

Prospect of Steinway bidding war emerges


Associated Press 12:28 p.m. EDT August 12, 2013

An unnamed investment firm has offered to buy Steinway, the musical instruments company, for $38 a share, topping Kohlberg's earlier bid by $3 a share, Steinway says...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/12/steinway-takeover-deal/2642627/

This is not very surprising to me. It ain't over until you-know-who sings.

I always thought 438 million for the Steinway name and brand was way too low.

Me too, Loren. The value of the company must be linked to the overall depressed piano market. That a higher bid is now on the table might be a sign that fortunes for the industry could be turning around. At least one speculator seems to be willing to gamble that it might be.

Paulson & Co. to Buy Steinway for $503 Million