(Updated) With today's deadline from lender CitiGroup looming and rumors of talks that could shutter its U.S. division swirling, many employees at EMI are spending as much time checking the internet for a scraps of news and updating their resumes as they are doing their jobs.
Those inside the company paint picture of very low morale and a high level of frustration. "I feel passionately about the work I do, and it would appear that our efforts are literally paying off," said one staffer. "But I can't ignore that this will mean nothing to the bank, let alone whoever buys what's left after Citi gets its way". "Just when we're showing positive results with Lady Antebellum, Gorillaz and the like, they are pulling the rug out from under us," said another. "We're being punished for past excesses in both the record and the financial industries," an EMI veteran told Hypebot. "It's like being in the middle of a perfect storm. What we do in our tiny portion of the ship doesn't matter at all."
But one staffer at EMI Music Publishing did try to paint a different picture of that division's morale. "We’re publisher of the year in the UK and US, hot with hits everywhere, meeting all our bank requirements, and delivering profits". But even he had to admit that his colleagues "we’re affected by the turmoil... everybody would prefer not to be reading stories about their difficulties every day".
