Universal Music, the world's biggest record company, is poised to announce the £1.2bn purchase of EMI's recorded music division, home to the Beatles, Coldplay and Tinie Tempah.

The sale is the first part of the break-up of the 114-year-old British company, which is likely to be followed by the EMI's music publishing division, most likely to a consortium led by Sony for in excess of $2bn (£1.26bn).

Although the enlarged Universal will now account a third of all music sales worldwide, company executives believe they can persuade regulators to allow it to swallow the business whole because the music industry is in such decline.

Nevertheless, Universal will respond by selling record labels or catalogues if the European Commission were to demand disposals. Its goal, however, will be to retain the Beatles material.

Buying EMI is a coup for Universal's boss, Briton Lucian Grainge, whose bid had been considered opportunistic. Smaller rival Warner Music, recently bought by Len Blavatnik's Access Industries, had been considered the front runner.

EMI is being sold by Citigroup, the bank that ended up owning the record company, after it seized control of the debt-laden business from venture capitalist Guy Hands.

However, Citigroup is retaining in deficit EMI's pension fund, which has 21,500 members. The deficit was £162m according to the last set of publicly available accounts.