In a somewhat unexpected move Bose Corporation issued a press-release today, announcing acquisition of McIntosh Group. McIntosh Group, which unites three luxury audio brands McIntosh Labs, Sonus Faber and Sumiko, was owned by a US private investment fund Highlander Partners.
A story of McIntosh Group in itself is a series of mergers, acquisitions and management buy-outs and sometimes unusual grouping of audio brands from US and Europe. McIntosh was founded 75 years ago in the state of New York, USA and was a worldwide recognised manufacturer of hi-fi audio electronics, including iconic amplifiers with blue VU Meters on the front panel. In 1990 private owners decided to sell the McIntosh business to a giant Japanese car audio corporation, Clarion, which added car amplifiers to the brand's core products. Those years also saw a rise in sales of luxury home cinema equipment and McIntosh chimed in with multi-channel amps, disc players and surround sound decoders.
Clarion Corporation while being a major OEM car audio producer (and partially owned by Nissan) was probably eyeing luxury car audio with the acquisition of McIntosh but with its own financial results being not so good in the early 2000s decided (2003) to sell McIntosh Labs to another Japanese corporation, DM Holdings, who were at the time a major player in mass market hi-fi, owning such popular brands as Denon, Marantz, Boston Acoustics.
Meanwhile in Italy, Sonus Faber, a privately owned company founded by Franco Serblin in early 1980s was also eyed for purchase by a local investment group. Sonus Faber was one of the pioneers of handcrafted solid wood cabinetry for hi-fi loudspeakers and was quite successful on the world market. The company moved to a bigger premises in the early 2000s and started to expand into more budget-minded production using other cabinet materials, but growth problems and a combination of other factors lead it to seek buyers. An investment fund was created using assets from Quadrivio SGR and other investors. The fund decided to establish a special Fine Sounds Group to snap not only Sonus Faber in Italy but McIntosh Labs in the USA as well. Later Fine Sounds Group grew by adding new purchases from Quadrivio: US amp maker Audio Research in 2009 (sold in 2020), US distribution network and hi-fi record cartridge supplier Sumiko in 2010, and digital front-end US specialist Wadia in 2011 (now defunct). Fine Sounds was a huge group at that time in terms of turnover in the luxury audio market but started to sell its assets in 2014–2016 when as a result of management buy-out (and some private equity support) Fine Sounds Group moved to the USA and was shortly renamed McIntosh Group.
In June 2022 another private equity fund decided to acquire McIntosh Group, largely to keep operations going for further sale. This time it was an American entity, Highlander Partners LP.
On November 15 Bose Corporation became a new owner of the McIntosh Group. Bose Corporation is huge in audio business, founded by MIT professor Dr. Amar Bose in 1964 it established itself as extensively advertised mass market audio manufacturer. Currently it is a major player in lucrative market of wireless audio wearables, noise-cancelling headphones, bluetooth wireless speakers, earbuds, automotive sound, soundbars etc. In 2024 they decided to enter the uncharted waters of high end audio. According to Bose Corporation CEO Lila Synder "With McIntosh Group in our portfolio, we can unlock even more ways to bring music to life in the home, on-the-go and in the car."
Incidentally both Sonus Faber and McIntosh Labs have started ambitious car audio branching businesses, with Sonus Faber signing agreement to supply certain Lamborghini and Maserati (Grecale and MC20) sports cars with car loudspeakers and McIntosh with partnership with Jeep to provide audio for selected models in Wagoneer, Grand Cherokee and Grand Wagoneer 4wd ranges.
Having sold it professional audio department in April 2023 Bose Corporation will now concentrate on domestic and automotive audio on both sides of the price spectrum. Bose Corporation press-release hints that the newly added brands will continue their product lines and customer markets separately with possible sharing of Bose expertise in modern noise cancelling and wireless technologies.
While one can't really spot a trend in audio industry merges and acquisitions a certain relatively recent event comes to mind, namely the purchase of Harman by Samsung. There is also an interesting discussion about who might be next in line. One hears that Massimo Corporation is under new management and may be interested in selling its consumer audio brands (Bowers & Wilkins, Denon, Marantz, Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, Classé), ).