The transaction will see KKR sell its majority stake in Chord to current shareholder Dundee Partners and its investor consortium with a minority stake held by UMG.<\/p>\n
According to the announcement on Tuesday (February 20), “KKR will exit Chord upon completion of the transaction, with the Dundee consortium and UMG owning 74.2%<\/strong> and 25.8%<\/strong> respectively”.<\/p>\n Additionally, according to Tuesday’s announcement, UMG and Dundee Partners will enter into a new long-term strategic partnership to actively manage Chord\u2019s rights through UMG\u2019s global network and to acquire additional catalogs via Chord in the future.<\/p>\n UMG will globally administer publishing and distribute recordings for Chord\u2019s existing catalogs, which contain more than 60,000<\/strong> music copyrights.<\/p>\n Chord\u2019s music publishing rights will be administered through Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) and recorded music through UMG\u2019s Virgin Music Group (VMG).<\/p>\n Chord was formed in 2021 by KKR and Dundee Partners, and is described by UMG as “a pure-play catalog of premier music intellectual property (IP)”.<\/p>\n In 2021, KKR and Dundee Partners, via the Chord Music Partners platform, acquired<\/a> the KMR Music Royalties II portfolio from Kobalt<\/a> Capital for approximately $1.1 billion.<\/strong><\/p>\n Chord\u2019s portfolio includes works from artists and songwriters, including The Weeknd, Ryan Tedder\/OneRepublic, David Guetta, Lorde, Kid Cudi, Diplo, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Ellie Goulding, ZZ Top, John Legend, Twenty One Pilots and many more.<\/p>\n UMG said on Tuesday that it “is positioned and resourced to manage and drive growth for Chord\u2019s existing rights catalogs, while UMG and Dundee Partners are both aligned in their long-term vision for the acquisition, management and growth opportunities for significant, timeless music-rights catalogs”.<\/p>\n Sir Lucian Grainge, Universal Music Group<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group said:\u00a0 \u201cFinding partners who share our passion for identifying iconic songs and recordings that will stand the test of time and deliver long-term growth is essential, which is why we\u2019re so pleased to be working with Stephen and Sam Hendel and Dundee Partners.<\/p>\n “With the leadership of Jody Gerson at UMPG, Nat Pastor and JT Myers at Virgin, and the support of our experienced creative executives around the world, no one can do more with music rights than our teams.<\/p>\n “We look forward to creating maximum commercial and creative value for the songwriters and artists in Chord and building for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to be partnering with Universal Music Group and embarking on this next exciting chapter for Chord.”<\/p>\n Sam Hendel, Dundee Partners \/ Chord<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Sam Hendel, Dundee Partners\u2019 Managing Principal and Co-Founder of Chord, said: \u201cWe\u2019re\u00a0thrilled to be partnering with Universal Music Group and embarking on this next exciting\u00a0chapter for Chord.<\/p>\n “By combining a best-in-class financial acquisition vehicle with the world\u2019s leading music company, we are creating both a premier platform for music investment as well as a permanent home for premier artist\u2019s legacies and their iconic cultural works.<\/p>\n “We\u2019d like to thank the team at KKR for their partnership and creating a strong foundation for Chord and its future success.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with many leading artists and to create significant value for our investors by building Chord into a differentiated and scaled portfolio.”<\/p>\n Jenny Box, KKR<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Jenny Box, Partner, KKR, said: \u201cWe are grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with many leading artists and to create significant value for our investors by building Chord into a differentiated and scaled portfolio.<\/p>\n “We believe that Dundee and UMG will drive further value creation for artists and that they share our commitment to being respectful stewards of artists\u2019 music.”<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re excited to partner with the Hendel family in Chord for a number of reasons.”<\/p>\n Boyd Muir, Universal Music Group<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Boyd Muir, Universal Music Group\u2019s Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and President of Operations, said: \u201cWe\u2019re excited to partner with the Hendel family in Chord for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n “First, KKR and Dundee have built a very high-quality catalog that will benefit from our first-rate management and global capabilities. Second, this new structure provides us with an efficient vehicle for future catalog acquisitions, without significant capital allocation through a combination of leverage and partner equity capital.<\/p>\n “And finally, it offers us the perfect partner to approach future growth opportunistically and flexibly, one who is equally bullish on the long-term prospects for music.\u201d<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The transaction will see KKR sell its majority stake in Chord to current shareholder Dundee Partners and its investor consortium with a minority stake held by UMG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":194084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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