Chris Munden said:
Yet another famous British name sold to a foreign owner, The list is endless and not just Hi Fi, from chocolate to Rolls Royce, why doesn't Cameron put the whole country on E Bay, One small Island, many inventions needs new owner.
Don't take this the wrong way, but your post reads a bit daily mail - low on facts, high on emotion...
There's a vast difference between venture capital and private equity. VC normally invests in brilliant, but disfunctional companies - to add order to chaos and aid the creative process by removing the burden of structure/direction. PE is a focus purely on the numbers - take a company that returns X and sweat the assets/opportunities to deliver X+. Basically PE takes good ideas, compromises on quality (because 8/10 customers cannot tell their elbow from other parts of their anatomy) and rolls out an easy to franchise/scalable process.
Turning that to Hi-Fi, and I don't think either model really works. This is really a curious deal.
High-end HiFi is a quirky business. Brilliant minds are focussed on perfection. They make some gear to pay the rent but that means they've got the financial security to make the amazing products which offer a poor return. Sell lots of P5s, and make Nautilius. (See also the career of Denzel Washington).
So how does this play out in HiFi? The Sonos analogy is actually a really, really good one. I expect the brilliant minds of b&w will be herded into working on wireless onebox solutions, headhones, slick bose-y type affairs. They will still work on the HiFi core (and a British design house will be central to that message), but that will be purely to show that they have pedigree to gloss the true focus (upper-mid-range lifestyle solutions).
A sad erosion of a brand I really love.