Sir Mick Jagger has supplemented his state pension by striking a £7.5 million deal that will take four decades of The Rolling Stones catalogue away from his long time record company EMI.

His decision, revealed by Times Online, is the latest in a series of clashes between musicians and EMI’s new owner, Guy Hands, Britain’s best-known venture capitalist who was the best man at William Hague’s wedding.

Sir Mick and his fellow Stones will switch all the albums since Sticky Fingers in 1971 to rival record label Universal Music and in a swipe at EMI’s management the band said: “Universal are forward thinking, creative and hands-on music people.”

Guy Hands’s Terra Firma took over the long struggling EMI a year ago for £2.1 billion, but since then EMI has had difficult relations with some key artists. Radiohead quit last year, shortly after he arrived, opting to self-release In Rainbows via the internet.

More recently, Damon Albarn, the key man behind Blur and Gorillaz, is taking his Chinese opera, Monkey and the West away from the label, which has been interpreted as a signal of his dissatisfaction with a company that also retains Coldplay and Robbie Williams on its books.

Although The Stones only occasionally release new material — the last, A Bigger Bang appeared in 2005 — what makes the deal so important is that the band control all of its catalogue since 1971, which includes Black and Blue and Exile on Main Street.

It is estimated that catalogue generates about £1.5 million a year, although Universal believes it can do better. The record company indicated yesterday it would re-release all the band’s classic albums individually. The band is signing on for around five years.

Ironically, despite setting aside Guy Hands, Sir Mick has always been one of the most financially astute rock and roll artists, and selected Universal after asking for bids from all the world’s music companies.

Their last tour grossed an all-time record $558 million, although those revenues are entirely separate from the catalogue deal. Group biographer Philip Norman once said: “Today they’re like company directors who convene this board meeting once every three years on stages all across America.”

The Stones first signed to EMI in 1977. They were wooed away by Sir Richard Branson in the late 1980s, but returned to the fold in 1992 when EMI bought the entrepreneur’s Virgin Records concern. EMI wished the Stones well, and tried to hint that Universal had overpaid for the ageing band, saying in a statement that “EMI Music will only ever conclude mutually beneficial agreements with its artists”.

Universal has been in pole position since the beginning of the year, when it released Shine a Light, the soundtrack to a 2006 live performance filmed in New York by Martin Scorsese in the spring. That album sold about 750,000 worldwide.

Universal also controls The Stones’ sixties output in Britain, released through the Decca label, and the deal unifies the band’s entire recorded collection. In the US, that catalogue is controlled by Abkco.

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive