Will ID&T be back in Dutch hands?

By Rik Houwers 22 September 2016

In 2013 SFX Entertainment bought ID&T and their subsidiary companies for more than 120 million Euros. Quickly after financial difficulties arose and finally SFX was on the edge of bankruptcy. Now it seems like ID&T and other Dutch companies are working together to buy ID&T back from SFX.

What happened?
Robert Sillerman used to be the CEO of SFX Entertainment. In 2000 he sold the company, but in 2012 he started SFX Entertainment again. With a lot of money Sillerman bought various companies in the EDM market. One of them was ID&T, with the subsidiary companies Q-dance and b2s, in 2013. In the beginning everything looked good and SFX decided to go public. They gained a lot of money for their shares and immediately bought more companies. That’s where it all went wrong. SFX bought more and more companies without a vision and plan which led to big revenue losses. In January of this year, the company had a debt of 320 million dollars. Parts of SFX have been sold or disposed to prevent more losses.

In February SFX Entertainment filed for bankruptcy and Robert Sillerman resigned in April as CEO of the company. What will all of this mean for ID&T, Q-dance, b2s or Awakenings?

sfx-2 Back to the roots
Wouter Tavecchio (Q-dance), Bas Meijer (ID&T), Rocco Veenboer (Monumental/Awakenings), Jan Lok (b2s) and Bart Wesseling (Paylogic) are working together to get these companies back to the Netherlands. These entrepreneurs already started a new holding called ‘One of US Holding II’. It’s named after the first holding they had for ID&T ‘One of Us Holding’. In an interview with a regional tv broadcaster Duncan Stutterheim, one of the founders of ID&T, revealed that he will help with this project.

Future
It’s not clear what ID&T’s future will hold, but it seems it will take shape soon. Still we have to wait how it redeems itself. One thing is clear and that is that the future of Dutch Hardstyle organisations are not in danger after the bankruptcy of SFX. Let’s hope that ID&T, Q-dance and b2s will be and remain in responsible hands.