Chris Roling is the unknown executive who has just been catapulted into running EMI, one of the world’s four music majors, as a result of the takeover by Terra Firma.

Yesterday was his first day in charge at the company in the dual role of chief operating officer and chief financial officer, where he was described simply as “very professional”.

Surprisingly, for such an important role at Terra Firma - the venture capital firm’s third fund is investing £1.5 billion of its £3.5 billion of capital - he has been with the group for only a few months. Previously, he was a senior vice-president at ICI, handling procurement and logistics. His CV includes a spell as chief financial officer in the late 1990s at Getty Images, the photo library, before leaving to join a Seattle-based technology company, Aventail, ahead of his move to ICI. But he has no music experience and, aside from the spell at Getty Images, no media experience.

Mr Roling, though, will be part of a team of “suits and ties” to descend on EMI’s West London headquarters.

Joining him is the equally anonymous Ashley Unwin, who was made a partner of Deloitte Consulting in 2004 and, like Mr Roling, joined Terra Firma this year, in his case as its director of talent. Mr Unwin is a veteran of Deloitte’s human capital practice and his job is to make an HR assessment of EMI’s top management to decide who will stay and if anybody should be brought in.

The third member of the trio at the helm of EMI’s operations is Julie Williamson, a long-time colleague of Guy Hands.

Originally a banking lawyer, her association with Mr Hands dates back to his time running Nomura’s principal finance group in 1998.

As a financial managing director, she is the partner responsible for the deal, having led the team who made Terra Firma’s investment in Tank & Rast, a German motorway service group. Bought for €1.1 billion in 2004, Terra Firma recently sold half to a Deutsche Bank subsidiary for €1.2 billion, after it had managed to boost visitor numbers, partly by investing heavily in cleaning the lavatories.

Ms Williamson’s responsibility at EMI will be “strategic business relationships”.

The question is whether the executives with no music experience can perform a similar clean-up at EMI, home to Pete Doherty.

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