If relations between Guy Hands and EMI's 260 talent scouts were already prickly, they are about to deteriorate after the private equity boss said they could not have done a worse job if they had bribed customers to buy music.

"I said to them, you could have just put a £50 note on the outside of every CD and you probably would have done a better job . . . and then we wouldn't have had to employ you," said Mr Hands, head of buy-out firm Terra Firma, at yesterday's Super Return private equity conference in Munich.