Concord acquires Round Hill’s UK-listed music fund – Music Business Worldwide

As expected, Concord has acquired Round Hill’s UK-listed music fund, Round Hill Music Royalty Fund (RHM).

Concord confirmed the news on Thursday (November 2), noting that the deal includes over 150,000 songs and 51 catalogs, including works by The Beatles, Alice In Chains, The Offspring, and hits recorded by Elvis Presley, Meatloaf, James Brown, and Billie Holiday.

It also includes a stake in the Carlin Catalog, which includes hits made famous by artists including Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis Presley, Peggy Lee, and George Harrison.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Concord said that the deal “highlights Concord’s continued growth and overall confidence in the copyright marketplace”.

Today’s news arrives over a month-and-a-half after we first reported (on September 8), that Alchemy Copyrights, LLC, trading as Concord, had agreed terms on a deal whereby it would acquire the entirety of Round Hill Music Royalty Fund (RHM) – the UK-listed fund operated by Round Hill Music – if it could secure RHM’s shareholder approval.

On October 18, the RHM Board approved the firm’s proposed USD $468.8 million sale to Concord with 99% of votes cast in favor.

As a result, according to the statement issued by RHM to the market last month, the effective date of the Concord/RHM “Scheme” would be Tuesday, October 31, 2023.

That same statement also provided a timetable for the transaction, marking Wednesday, November 1 as the day that would see the “cancellation of [the] listing of RHM Shares on [the] London Stock Exchange”.

(Round Hill Music Royalty Fund originally floated on the London Stock Exchange in November 2020).

A notice of “cancellation of admission of trading” was issued to the LSE on Wednesday (November 1) with effect from 8 a.m. GMT on November 1.

On Wednesday, the London Stock Exchange published a Notice of Removal of Round Hill Music Royalty Fund Limited’s securities.

Since 2015, Concord has deployed more than USD $2.0 billion of capital and completed more than 100 transactions across recorded music, music publishing and theatricals.

Its biggest acquisitions to date include its $550 million-plus acquisition of Imagem in 2017, and last year’s acquisition ~$300m acquisition of music rights from Phil Collins and members of Genesis.

Elsewhere at Concord, in August 2022, the company expanded into Australasia, via the eight-figure acquisition of Native Tongue.

In September this year, Concord acquired the music publishing catalog of New York, Nashville, and London-based music publisher, Mojo Music & Media. The catalog includes works of the bands REO Speedwagon, KISS, and Cheap Trick.

“The entire team at Concord is thrilled to be able to represent these iconic catalogs.”

Bob Valentine, Concord

Commenting on the acquisition, Bob Valentine, CEO of Concord said: “The entire team at Concord is thrilled to be able to represent these iconic catalogs.

“It is now our obligation to expose these songs and recordings to an even larger audience than their existing extraordinary fan bases. Furthering the cultural impact that these works have is certainly a responsibility we take seriously.”

Valentine added: “Since our inception, Concord has demonstrated a clear track record of preserving the legacy of our artists while leveraging new and innovative opportunities to create new fans.

“I can’t wait to see what our global creative teams of sync, licensing, marketing, copyright, and royalty experts come up with next.”

In December 2022, Concord confirmed that it had successfully priced $1.8 billion of senior notes secured by what it said was a “significant portion” of its catalog of sound recordings and songs.

The transaction was claimed by Concord to be “the largest asset-backed securitization offering of music rights in the industry to date in terms of both size of issuance and number of assets (over one million copyrights)”.Music Business Worldwide