Talking of music publishing, Chrysalis Music, whose main assets are in the publishing domain, reported yesterday that losses for the half year up to 31 Mar were £13 million, compared to a £2.27 million loss in the same period to March 2007.
Much of that loss could be attributed to an £11.8 million buyout of its pension scheme, and the company said it was also hit by a slow release schedule among its key songwriters (release schedules being in the hands of the record labels of course) and by that US screenwriters strike, which hit the lucrative sync rights market (the money TV and film studios pay to feature songs in their shows and movies). CEO Jeremy Lascelles said the company's performance was "broadly in line with management's expectations", and added that the first half of the current financial year was going well, with hits from the likes of Portishead, Estelle, and The Raconteurs, plus considerable hope for new signings like White Lies.
Chrysalis founder Chris Wright took the occasion of the financial announcement to talk about the recently aborted attempt to sell the company. As previously reported, various equity types and major music companies made offers to buy Chrysalis, but in the end Wright and his board decided to knock all the offers back. It had been known from the start that Wright was in no rush to sell and would only do so for the right price, though once it became clear Wright would personally do better from a sale if it could be rushed through before the change in capital gain tax laws in April, some commentators expected a deal to be done. In the end it was not.
Wright said this week that the company decided not to sell because "the world had changed" in the months that bids had been accepted as a result of that there credit crunch. He observed: "The operational people we were talking to that were desperately keen to get their hands on one of the very few large active remaining music publishing catalogues available today got driven out of the process by the accountants and the bankers". On the motivation to secure a sale before the change in tax laws, and his decision not to take advantage of the old capital gains tax system by pushing for a quick sale, he concluded: "This is not the kind of business where you need to be engaging in a fire sale at the wrong time".