There is increasing chatter about just when the drastic part of Guy Hands' planned EMI revamp will take place. Obviously there has been quite a bit of restructuring and senior executive changes going on at the major since Hands' Terra Firma bought the London based music firm last year, and especially since he announced his plans for the company in January. But those plans included the abrupt axing of 2000 jobs, and while some people have gone since the revamp began the expected big overnight cull is yet to occur.
Some EMI insiders assure us the restructuring (and therefore downsizing) plans are all on schedule, but Billboard and Reuters have reported that actually plans for the major job cuts have hit various snags, mainly because of clauses in either employee contracts that offer overly favourable pay offs even if someone's job just changes, or in artists contracts which change the label/artist relationship if a certain exec is sacked. Whether there's any truth in any of that we don't know. Given all this restructuring was meant to be completed before the summer, presumably we'll find out quite soon whether things are really on schedule.