The New York Post's Peter Lauria has reported that the sale of UK publishing catalogues Zomba UK, Rondor and 19 Music could fetch over $150 million.
As previously reported, the catalogues were previously owned by BMG Music Publishing, which was recently acquired by Univesal Music Pubishing. Universal had to commit to sell the UK catalogues in order to gain European Commission approval for the BMG acquisition, and Lauria says that we can now expect an Autumn sale of them.
Together the UK catalogues feature around 90,000 copyrights, including songs from the likes of Kaiser Chiefs and Linkin Park. Lauria reports that major publishing firms Sony/ATV and Warner/Chappell, both currently acquisition hungry, will likely bid for the publishing outfits, though a number of private equity operations are also known to be interested, which might push up the asking price.