Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd raises $260m+ to buy music copyrights

Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd, the company founded by veteran artist manager Merck Mercuriadis, has just raised over £200m ($262m). According to a report posted by Music Business Worldwide Fund will also IPO on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in the coming weeks.

The company told investors that it had exceeded its target of raising gross proceeds of £200m due to excess demand and this money will be spent on Music.

Indeed, a recently filed, updated prospectus, the company noted that it intended to ‘manage the songs it acquires with the objective of constructing a high quality and diversified portfolio’. It will identify these songs through its ‘Investment Adviser’ – which is, essentially, Mercuriadis – plus an Advisory Board made up of people well-known in music biz circles. These advisers, wrote MBW, include funk legend Nile Rodgers, as well as US-based artist manager Ian Montone and Lava Records founder Jason Flom.

Mercuriadis’s other advisers include attorney William Leibowitz – the founding partner of Roberts, Leibowitz and Hafitz – as well as Bjorn Lindvall, an experienced banker with a background at Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley, amongst others.

The prospectus adds:

Through [Mercuriadis and his advisory board’s] extensive relationships in the music industry, a pipeline of catalogues has been identified which the company believes are not available to all potential purchasers. The catalogues contain proven, evergreen songs from award-winning songwriters which are well-suited to the company’s investment strategy. The Investment adviser believes an opportunity currently exists to acquire catalogues at attractive valuations, where pricing is determined by reference to historical income (which does not yet reflect streaming growth over the last 12 months) and not future forecast revenues.