The first time Hartwig Masuch and Alistair Norbury met, they were on opposite sides of the table.
Back in 2012, Norbury was an artist manager, looking after Bryan Ferry, who had just regained the rights to much of his publishing catalogue.

The search for a new deal took artist and manager to Berlin and dinner with Masuch, German head of the fledgling ‘new’ BMG, which retained the name of the old major label superpower, but was rapidly carving out a ...