Jilted again, EMI's Nicoli left running only pure play.

For the third time, EMI Group Plc's Executive Chairman Eric Nicoli is the odd man out.

He tried to combine with Time Warner Inc.'s music unit in 2000 and was blocked by European regulators. Antitrust concerns also derailed talks with Bertelsmann AG'S BMG music division in 2001.

And last week Time Warner agreed to sell its music business, whose acts include Madonna and Kid Rock, for $2.6 billion to an investor group led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Thomas H. Lee Partners, spurning a lower offer from London-based EMI.

The rejections leave Nicoli, 53, who runs the world's third-largest music group, still looking for a merger partner, to help cut costs and restore growth as the industry enters its fourth year of shrinking sales.

Nicoli, who took over at EMI in 1999 just as piracy and downloading were revving up, has been dogged by bad luck in his career. He became chief executive at his previous employer, United Biscuits Plc, in 1991 just as Britain's largest cookie maker and the world's other food companies had to deal with a wave of price-cutting by supermarkets. United Biscuit's share price fell by a half during his eight-year tenure as CEO.

"It would be easy to portray Nicoli as a serial failure," said David Lang, an analyst at Investec Securities. "But serial successes have been few and far between in the businesses he's been in."

Nicoli hasn't sat still as music sales dropped. In 2001 he fired Ken Berry, who had run the record-music unit, and replaced him with former PolyGram head Alain Levy. Levy cut the roster of musicians to 1,200 from 1,600 by buying out or letting expire contracts of unprofitable acts that Berry and his wife Nancy had signed.

Nicoli eliminated 1,900 jobs, lifting sales per employee. He also sold assets such as a stake in retailer HMV Music.

"He's done the right things. He tried to run the business efficiently, he's taken costs out of it, but the industry hasn't been easy and I can't see it getting better in the next years," said Colin Morton, who helps manage $681 million at BWD Rensburg in Leeds, England. "There's not much else he could have done."

Recorded music makes up 85 percent of EMI's sales, with the rest coming from licensing the rights to music. With artists that include the Beatles and Norah Jones, it is the only pure music company among the industry's Top 5.

By contrast, music accounts for just 7 percent of overall revenue at Sony Corp., which is the world's second-largest consumer electronics company and has a market value of $33 billion. Sony and Bertelsmann said earlier this month that they would merge their music units.

"What's different and difficult for EMI is that it's a standalone music company and can't hide its problems in its broader accounts the way a Sony can," said Peter Martland, lecturer at Cambridge University who wrote the book "Since Records Began: EMI, the First 100 Years."

"Given that," Martland added, "he's done a remarkable job turning the business around and making it profitable."

One reason Time Warner decided to sell to the Bronfman-led group is that it wouldn't need antitrust approval, which had blocked EMI's two earlier merger attempts. European regulators blocked a 2000 attempt to merge with Time Warner at the same time the U.S. media company was merging with AOL.

Bertelsmann's linkup with Sony and Time Warner's decision to sell its music unit to the Bronfman group don't mean merger possibilities have vanished. Bertelsmann and Sony haven't signed a final agreement, and EMI could later merge with Bronfman's new company. "In this business, everyone keeps talking to everyone," Theresa Wise, a partner in Accenture Ltd. media and entertainment practice.

EMI shareholders might also receive an offer from private equity firm Blackstone LP, the Observer reported, without saying where it got the information. Blackstone was preparing a 1.5 billion-pound bid for EMI if the company failed to acquire Time Warner's record unit, the newspaper said:

People who know Nicoli say he's warm and friendly. When EMI's Norah Jones won an unprecedented eight Grammy Awards out of eight nominations in February, he jumped and punched the air at each victory.

Nicoli has said in interviews that he grew up listening to Radio Luxembourg, one the leading European stations to play rock music in the early 1960s. He was born in 1950 to Italian farming parents in East Anglia, northeast of London.

After getting a physics degree from Kings College in London, he went into marketing at candy bar maker Rowntree Mackintosh. He joined United Biscuits in 1980 as a marketer at its British cookie division, and became chief executive in 1991.

Nicoli, who had initially continued the rapid expansion of his predecessors by buying snack-food businesses around the world, sold units or closed factories as losses mounted.

He joined EMI's board in 1993 while still at United Biscuits. When Executive Chairman Colin Southgate retired in 1999, the board chose Nicoli to replace him.

"Some people will no doubt blame the incumbent, but he's had a difficult background to operate in," said Jim Stride, managing director at AXA Investment Managers Ltd, which owns about 5 percent of EMI.

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