History
The company was set up in 1977 when Lloyd Webber, frustrated with the terms of his contract with the impresario Robert Stigwood, decided to take greater control over the management of his creative works. All Lloyd Webber compositions and productions created from that point have been owned by the company.
The Really Useful Group was floated on the stock market in 1986. Four years later, Lloyd Webber took it back into private ownership, selling 30% to film and music group PolyGram to fund the cost of buying back shares. In 1995, PolyGram was bought by Canadian conglomerate Seagram, with the Really Useful stake being passed to its own film and music subsidiary, Universal. In 1999, Lloyd Webber paid $75m for Universal's 30% stake, giving the Really Useful Group 100% ownership of all the composer's works.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)