D&M Holdings Looking For A Sugar Daddy
D&M Holdings, former owner of ReplayTV, is looking for a buyer. D&M Holdings is the parent company of Denon, Marantz, Snell, McIntosh, Boston Acoustics, Escient, and other high-end AV brands. The two leading contenders to purchase D&M are Kenwood parent Bain Capital and Best Buy, with the a price of roughly $700 million. Best Buy has strong reasons to pursue the purchase:
As Best Buy is D&M’s biggest customer, it makes good financial sense for the consumer electronics retailer. The implications for the types of equipment that will be offered in their Magnolia shops would increase in number as well as quality. McIntosh has a near fanatical following, though being able to roll down to your local Best Buy to check out the latest tube amps is probably going to be met with mixed emotions.
If they’ve been planning this for a while, and most likely they have, it could be a contributing factor in their unloading of ReplayTV to DirecTV in December. ReplayTV was the odd-man-out in this grouping of companies, and probably would’ve been a sticking point in the deal.
Picked up via EngadgetHD.
Site Updates RSS
![[Valid RSS]](http://www.gizmolovers.com/Images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS
feed"){kind=small}
April 21st, 2008 at 18:51
Interesting. What I really find amusing is not picturing audiophiles’ reaction to McIntosh gear being available at Best Buy, so much as imagining regular consumers trying to get their McIntosh tube amps fixed at Best Buy a few years hence. I don’t know that Best Buy’s AV guys are on the ball enough for that to be anything other than high comedy.
April 21st, 2008 at 18:58
It’s a tube amp - you just swap out the tubes, right?
I’d be waiting for Joe Consumer to try to figure out how to connect the McIntosh amp to their Macintosh to boost its power.
April 21st, 2008 at 19:12
I don’t know that even Joe Consumer is that dumb.
Meanwhile, in England, the whole tube/valve thing leads to infinite confusion…
April 24th, 2008 at 07:05
Maybe TiVo can get in on the deal by selling off its S3 “division” at the same time.