UTA will be shutting down their Toronto office, Billboard has learned.
The move comes a little less than two years after UTA acquired The Agency Group. Included in the purchase was the company's Toronto office, created by TAG founder Neil Warnock, along with COO Jack Ross and CEO Ralph James.
The UTA Toronto office is home to nine agents who represent a number of top Canadian bands, including Nickelback (currently in the middle of its Feed the Machine North American Tour), as well as acts like City and Colour, Billy Talent, Rival Sons, 54-40, Barenaked Ladies, Marianas Trench, Sam Roberts Band and Alexisonfire. UTA plans to shift a number of Canadian acts to the company's offices to New York, Los Angeles and London.
UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer made the announcement in a company-wide email, writing:
I want to share some changes we are implementing to the structure of our music group.
With the acquisition of The Agency Group two years ago, we made our ambitions clear to build a thriving and successful global music business. Since then, we’ve expanded our roster and continued to recruit dynamic, innovative executives to our team, most recently David Zedeck as our new Global Head of Music.
Now, after considering where we see the strongest prospects for continued growth, we have made the decision to take additional steps to focus our global music practice in the U.S. and UK. This will mainly impact our colleagues in Toronto, where we will be closing that office over the coming months. We’re taking this step after careful consideration, and we recognize it’s a tough one for our colleagues there. They are talented professionals who we’ve collaborated with for many years and who have contributed to our success. We are incredibly grateful to every one of them. But we believe this is the strongest and best strategic decision for UTA Music going forward, one that will allow us to put even greater focus on artist development and our full-service approach to our clients.
The future of UTA Music is very bright. Thank you to everyone for your work and creativity as we continue forward.
The Canadian office is the first former TAG office to be shut down since the August 20, 2015 acquisition, and the hiring of 95 TAG agents spread out between London, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New York, and Malmo, Sweden.
Since the 2015 acquisition, UTA has made a number of strategic hires, including the hiring of David Zedeck from Live Nation to run UTA's music division, as well as bringing on Greg Janese and Curt Motley, who had worked in Paradigm's Nashville office. UTA has also announced the hiring of Geoff "Geespin" Gamere from iHeartMedia in April, as well as Mike “Mike G” Guirguis, Bex Majors, Billy Wood, Rob Walker and music brand partnerships head Toni Wallace.
