The Warners bought the Brunswick label in 1930, but the collapse of the record market during the Great Depression cost the studio heavily and the label was sold to the American Record Corporation at the end of 1931 for a fraction of its former value. As a result, Warner Bros. had shied away from any involvement in the record business for the next 25 years.
According to music historian Fred Goodman, Semenenko had a strong interest in the entertainment business. After joining the Warner Bros. board he pushed studio boss Jack L. Warner to establish a recorded music division, which was eventually incorporated in 1958 as Warner Bros. Records.[4]
Semenenko put together a syndicate of six banks in 1963 to help a troubled Curtis Publishing.[5]
In 1967, he resigned as vice-chairman and a director of First Boston after his activities were dissected in a first article in The Wall Street Journal.[6]
^Fred Goodman, The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerce (Jonathon Cape, London, 1997, ISBN0-224-05062-1), p.44