Favoured by Bill Hanley, the Father of Festival Sound, in his pioneering work with live sound reinforcement – and famously the amplifiers principally used to drive the PA at Woodstock in 1969 – the McIntosh Group has been acquired by the Framingham, Massachusetts-based Bose Corporation.
The purchase provides Bose access to the high-end consumer audio market. Bose CEO Lila Snyder, who took on the role of Bose CEO in 2020, did not provide terms or a price for the deal when it was announced earlier this month. McIntosh was previously owned by Highlander Partners, a Dallas-based private equity firm.
Bose is privately held and doesn’t share annual revenue, although it had about US$3bn in sales in 2023, according to Forbes. It has about 3,000 employees.
McIntosh will continue to manufacture the high-end audio equipment it is known for out of its longtime headquarters in Binghamton, New York. The deal includes Sonus Faber, a company that makes high-end speakers by hand in Italy. ‘There is this opportunity for luxury, where the consumer is more discerning, really interested in the heritage and the story, and that handcrafted nature,’ Snyder says.
McIntosh has been making high-end amplifiers and other audio equipment since 1949, and one of its devices can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The Sonus Faber catalogue includes a pair of loudspeakers that costs US$140,000.
See also:
The Last Seat in the House (the story of Bill Hanley)
