This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Deals Labels & Publishers
Ole gets itself a $500 million credit facility
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 16 September 2016
Canadian music rights firm Ole has secured itself a $500 million credit facility. Hey, they could run a streaming service with that kind of money. For a few months, anyway.
The new cash pile is being provided by a consortium of twelve US and Canadian banks, with the financing being led by the LA-based City National Bank. The music firm set out to secure a $400 million facility apparently, but all the wanker bankers were so keen to join the party that it just had to accept the extra $100 million, because you don’t want to upset the wanker bankers. I mean, they might go off and destroy your economy.
“We believe the overwhelming demand for the facility speaks volumes to Ole’s track record of execution and success”, said the music company’s boss bloke Robert Ott. “We look forward to finding new opportunities to continue to scale in existing and complementary verticals as well as to further enhance our technology and data management assets”.
Ah, complementary verticals. I may be a bit old fashioned here, but they’re my very favourite kind of verticals.
“We are pleased to have the financial backing, expertise and support from City National Bank and our other financial partners”, Ott concluded.
“We’ve been supporting the entertainment industry for over 60 years”, said one of those partners, the chief dude at City National, Russell Goldsmith. “We see great potential in Ole, which has earned a premiere reputation not only in the music industry, but in film and television as well. City National’s lead role in this significant credit facility is possible in part because we are now an RBC [Royal Bank Of Canada] company and it highlights our ever-growing commitment to serving the broad financial needs of the music industry”.
To celebrate all that new cash, Ole blurted out a bunch of stats, like how it had now completed $520 million in entertainment acquisitions since launching twelve years ago, and how that meant it now controlled 50,000 songs and 60,000 hours of telly and movies, making it one of the “largest independent rights management companies in the world”.
Which is kind of like saying “we’re one of the largest providing you don’t count all the largest”, but hey, these guys have access to half a billion dollars, so this is no time to pick holes. Ole, fucking genius I say. I’ll have a steak dinner please.
