Shareholders of Hipgnosis Songs Fund, which in recent times made waves by serving to popularize music rights as an asset class, have voted to simply accept a $1.6 billion takeover from US non-public fairness agency Blackstone, filings confirmed Tuesday.
A regulatory submitting confirmed shareholders overwhelmingly voted to approve the deal, which caps a tumultuous yr for the British agency, together with a bidding struggle that adopted investor issues over the fund’s tumbling share value.
Its outspoken chief, Merck Mercuriadis, final week had introduced he would depart as chairman of Hipgnosis Track Administration as soon as the Blackstone acquisition of the fund was last.
Hipgnosis Songs Fund is listed as an funding belief on the London Inventory Change, the place it went public six years in the past. Its portfolio contains tens of hundreds of tracks.
Mercuriadis had been working the separate administration firm, which in 2021 Blackstone invested $1 billion to accomplice with.
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Hipgnosis performed a big position in hyping the spike in gross sales of profitable music portfolios, dropping staggering sums on catalogs together with these of Neil Younger, Justin Bieber and Shakira.
Mercuriadis, a longtime trade govt who at occasions managed careers of stars like Elton John and Beyonce, pitched that music was an asset whose revenues would function exterior of normal market swings.
He co-founded Hipgnosis with guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers.
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However as a music catalog shopping for frenzy noticed a number of years of blockbuster gross sales, some within the trade grumbled that Hipgnosis was overpaying and driving costs up.
Issues final yr over the corporate’s share value in addition to asset valuations prompted calls for for structural change and a seek for an out of doors purchaser.
American unbiased music firm Harmony had reached a tentative deal to amass the fund for $1.4 billion, however Blackstone’s greater provide received out ultimately.
In saying his choice to step down final week, Mercuriadis mentioned “it is a well timed alternative for me to undertake a strategic shift of focus, and to spend extra time advocating on behalf of songwriters to make sure that they’re correctly compensated for his or her work.”
