Sony BMG leases former CAA office

Sony BMG Music Entertainment has leased Creative Artists Agency Inc.’s former Beverly Hills headquarters, an I.M. Pei building that has a mural by Roy Lichtenstein in its 57-foot-high atrium.

The group, a venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann, will move in by the end of the year, Michael Ovitz, a founder of the Hollywood talent agency and building owner, said this week at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Sony BMG spokesman John McKay declined to comment.

The building at 9830 Wilshire Blvd. has been vacant since January 2007, after CAA moved into a nearby Century City high-rise nicknamed “The Death Star” by gossip website Defamer.com.

The 75,000-square-foot, three-story building was constructed in 1989.

New York-based Sony BMG is the world’s second-largest music company, behind Vivendi’s Universal Music Group. Its current West Coast offices are in Santa Monica.

In other news, Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann won a ruling Thursday at the European Union’s highest court to throw out a lower EU tribunal’s decision that had temporarily jeopardized the formation of their Sony BMG music label.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg sent the case back to the lower court for reconsideration, saying the tribunal made “errors of law” when it decided the European Commission’s initial approval of the Sony BMG venture was wrong.