Brookfield Asset Management is to acquire a significant minority interest in independent publisher Primary Wave Music in a deal valued in excess of $2 billion, according to a report by PE Insights.
Brookfield Asset Management is to acquire a significant minority interest in independent publisher Primary Wave Music in a deal valued in excess of $2 billion, according to a report by PE Insights.
Brookfield will provide an additional capital funding commitment of $1.7 billion to invest in music copyrights. An initial acquisition of over $700 million of music rights from the company’s fund 1 and fund 2 will go into Primary Wave’s new permanent vehicle which will hold assets in perpetuity.
Primary Wave has already finalised over $300 million of deals year-to-date and has another another $600 million of pending transactions, which it expects to complete by year-end.
The company’s assets include interests in the catalogs of Prince, Bob Marley, Whitney Houston, James Brown, Stevie Nicks, Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Bing Crosby, Def Leppard, Boston, Burt Bacharach, Olivia Newton-John, and Sun Records. The company also recently acquired the music-publishing assets of Ramones singer Joey Ramone for around $10 million.
Entertainment and sports agency, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), is also to become a strategic partner and minority shareholder in Primary Wave, with funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management (Oaktree) also reamaining involved.
