Sound United Announces Intent to Acquire Bowers & Wilkins
Sound United, the parent company of Denon, Marantz, Polk Audio and many more audio-video brands has today announced its intention to acquire Bowers & Wilkins.
Kevin Duffy, CEO at Sound United, said in a statement:
Over the course of five decades Bowers & Wilkins built one of the most prestigious brands in the global speaker market with industry-leading acoustical engineering, iconic design and marketing, B&W is a transformative brand and we look forward to the opportunity to finalize the transaction. This reflects Sound United's unwavering focus to achieve its mission of bringing joy to the world through sound.
The preliminary letter of intent to acquire Bowers & Wilkins means the proposed transaction "remains subject to ongoing discussions, confirmatory diligence, regulatory approvals, and other required consents."
Read Bowers & Wilkins' Response Statement
Sound United Brands
Just over a year ago Sound United announced similar intentions to acquire Onkyo and Pioneer as reported here, however that deal didn't eventuate, so until the ink dries, we'll wait and see.
In 2018, Sound United also rescued Canadian brand Classé which had been left orphaned by the sale of B&W Group who then owned the brand (and Bowers & Wilkins) to EVA Automation, the current owners of B&W. With the announcement of Sound United's intentions, the B&W and Classé brands may well end up reunited.
This latest news comes amid much speculation that senior technical designers and executives at Bowers & Wilkins responsible for the brand's Formation wireless products, have been successfully approached by Apple and taken positions with the Silicon Valley headquartered company, who appears to have a renewed focus on higher quality audio and streaming devices.
More as the story develops.
Marc Rushton
StereoNET’s Founder and Publisher was born in England and raised on British Hi-Fi before moving to Australia. He developed an early love of music and playing bass guitar before discovering the studio and the other side of the mixing desk. After writing for print magazines, Marc saw the future in digital publishing and founded the first version of StereoNET in 1999.
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