Sony (NYSE: SONY) is a publicly listed company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan that owns 7 consumer brands across 2 categories, and has 4 recorded transactions.[1]
Sony was founded in a bombed-out Tokyo department store in 1946 and became a consumer electronics giant before buying its way into Hollywood and music. Entertainment now produces more of its profit than electronics, which is a reversal of what the name still suggests to most people.
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
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Sony acquired Crunchyroll from AT&T for $1.175 billion and merged its own Funimation service into it. Crunchyroll had begun as an unlicensed anime site run by university students; simultaneous licensed release is what turned anime into a mainstream global business.
Sony bought out Bertelsmann's half of Sony BMG for about $1.2 billion, ending a joint venture formed in 2004 and taking full ownership of RCA Records among others. Bertelsmann kept the music publishing catalogue, which it rebuilt into BMG.
Sony acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment for about $3.4 billion in cash, roughly $4.9 billion including assumed debt. Japanese ownership of a Hollywood studio was politically contentious, and Sony wrote down billions on the business a few years later before it eventually became one of its most profitable divisions.
Sony acquired CBS Records for about $2 billion, buying the oldest record label in the world along with it. It was the first of two purchases that turned a Japanese electronics manufacturer into a major American media owner, and it drew political alarm in the United States at the time.
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Sony owns 7 consumer brands tracked here, including Sony Music, Columbia Records, Columbia Pictures, PlayStation, Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures.
Yes. Sony is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and was founded in 1946.
Sony is a publicly listed company owned by its shareholders; it trades as SONY on the NYSE.
The most recent completed acquisition recorded here is Crunchyroll on 9 August 2021.
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
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