BERLIN - Sony has agreed to buy the 50 percent it does not already own in music giant Sony BMG from German media group Bertelsmann, the latter said on Tuesday.
Financial details were not disclosed but sources familiar with the matter said that for the German firm the deal was valued at around 1.5 billion dollars (960 million euros).
"This move is consistent with our new growth strategy and will enable us to focus on our defined growth areas," Bertelsmann chairman Hartmut Ostrowski said in a statement.
Sony and Bertelsmann had each owned half of the music publishing firm since its creation in 2004, and Sony had an option to buy Bertelsmann's stake, press reports said.
Sony Music Entertainment Incorporated (SMEI), as the new entity will be known, is to encompass a string of music labels that include Arista Records, Columbia Records, Epic Records, J Records, Jive Records, RCA Records and Zomba.
Among its best-known artists are Celine Dion, Alicia Keys, Yo-Yo Ma, Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake, Usher and Jay Chou.
In June, the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that Ostrowski had decided to get out of the music business owing to falling sales caused by Internet downloads.
Bertelsmann is also active in television with the RTL group, publishing, with Gruner + Jahr and Random House, services, and book and record clubs.
Those clubs are currently being restructured however, and their partial sale is also expected to follow.
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