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CAA and Brookfield buy into Primary Wave

By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 10 October 2022

Primary Wave last week announced two new investments into the company. Talent agency CAA is to become a strategic partner and minority shareholder in the music rights firm, while investment outfit Brookfield has taken a “significant” minority interest, providing $1.7 billion in new funding.

“Brookfield is among the most intelligent and well financed deal-makers in the world”, says Primary Wave CEO Larry Mestel. “What separates them from every other financially oriented investor of their size is their creativity, long-term horizon and ability to help scale unique businesses with operational expertise in addition to capital”.

“The addition of the CAA team to the Primary Wave family”, he adds, “provides the artistic, creative, relationship and content-creation clout unheard of in the music publishing space”.

Primary Wave has been busy buying up music rights recently, of course, with over $300 million worth of deals done so far this year, and a further $600 million expected to be completed by the end of the year.

“We are THRILLED to deliver a comprehensive capital solution to Larry and the team at Primary Wave to support their continued acquisition of the world’s most iconic music IP”, says Managing Partner at Brookfield, Angelo Rufino. “Strong secular growth trends, scarcity value of assets and the continued penetration of music in new forms of content delivery underpin this significant commitment to the asset class”.

Last week Primary Wave announced that it had done a deal with the estate of Joey Ramone to acquire a stake in its share of The Ramones’ songs catalogue.

Other recent deals involve music rights linked to The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas, Alice In Chains and James Brown.