US personal fairness group Blackstone is vying to purchase Pink Floyd’s again catalogue, a significant guess on music rights that would worth the band’s songs at virtually half a billion {dollars}.
The buyout group would strike the deal by way of Hipgnosis Song Management, the corporate based by Elton John’s former supervisor Merck Mercuriadis that Blackstone now owns a majority stake in, in response to company filings.
A Pink Floyd deal would burnish Blackstone’s credentials as a important participant within the music rights enterprise. The band is among the best-selling teams of all time and its catalogue is wanted, with Sony Music, Warner Music, KKR-backed BMG and Oaktree-funded Primary Wave additionally bidding, 5 individuals with data of the matter stated.
Blackstone arrange Hipgnosis Songs Capital, a billion-dollar fund, after shopping for HSM final 12 months. HSC has to this point purchased $341mn of again catalogues from Leonard Cohen, Justin Timberlake, Nile Rodgers, Nelly Furtado and nation singer Kenny Chesney.
The Pink Floyd deal could possibly be price greater than all HSC’s present holdings mixed, underscoring its seriousness in regards to the business regardless of rising rates of interest making such offers much less enticing.
Artists reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan have offered their songbooks to music firms for a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} lately, whereas personal fairness corporations piled into the market in the hunt for regular returns throughout the lengthy interval of low rates of interest.
The catalogue of the UK band spans hits reminiscent of “Money”, “Comfortably Numb” and “Another Brick in the Wall”. A deal could possibly be agreed inside a couple of weeks, the individuals added.
Pink Floyd is promoting each the copyrights to its songs and its recordings, or grasp copies, making its catalogue one of the vital precious to come back to the market. It is in search of £400mn or extra for these copyrights.
A weaker sterling over the previous few months has meant that the worth tag of the deal has change into cheaper in greenback phrases for the American bidders because the course of started.
The Blackstone-backed Hipgnosis fund this month issued $221mn of asset-backed securities — bonds that use the music copyrights as collateral. This was used to refinance the debt it took on to initially fund the $341mn of music purchases.
The debt will price the Hipgnosis fund greater than 6 per cent a 12 months, in contrast with slightly below 4 per cent that KKR-backed Chord Music Partners must pay on the same debt deal organized in January.
The KKR-backed deal is tied to about 62,000 songs by artists together with The Weeknd and Lorde.
Blackstone and Hipgnosis declined to remark.
Additional reporting by Robert Smith
Source: www.ft.com