HarbourView Equity Partners founder and CEO Sherrese Clarke. Photo Credit: HarbourView
Moments after acquiring a portion of Rodney Jerkins’ IP, HarbourView Equity Partners has scored $500 million in royalty-backed debt financing from KKR.
Newark-headquartered HarbourView reached out with word of the private-securitization proceeds today, about 15 months after revealing a separate round of KKR debt financing. Technically, the older of the two tranches clocked in at “close to $500 million,” compared to $500 million proper here.
Meanwhile, HarbourView in March 2024 said it intended to use the capital “to expand music investment opportunities.” This time around, though, the business opted to highlight comparatively open-ended plans spanning “entertainment, media, and sports investment opportunities” alike.
It remains to be seen whether the varied focus actually translates into non-music deals, or at least more multifaceted investments.
As things stand, industry vets account for a substantial portion of HarbourView’s team, and the company is said to have scooped up north of 70 song catalogs thus far. The pile of IP includes works from the initially noted Jerkins as well as T-Pain, to name a couple recent additions.
With all that said, April 2024 did see HarbourView invest in Mucho Mas Media, a film and TV company that says it “focuses on Latino communities and Latin America.” Also supporting the diversification possibility is decidedly stiff competition in the catalog arena, which certainly doesn’t lack capital or eager buyers.
Providing a bit of extra insight, HarbourView founder and head Sherrese Clarke reiterated top-level plans to keep on “investing in evergreen intellectual property.”
“We are thrilled to have KKR’s continued support as we further scale the firm,” added Clarke. “This additional capital from KKR will help us accelerate our strategy to align with where the media, sports and entertainment markets are headed. We see a tremendous opportunity to continue investing in evergreen intellectual property, which we believe is historically uncorrelated to broader market volatility and forms a powerful diversification tool.”
Back to the funding side, HarbourView has boosted the song-rights sub-sector’s 2025 debt financing – not overall capital raised, which is even larger – past the $1 billion mark. Influence Media Partners kicked off the year with a $360 million securitization, followed by the $200 million that Duetti pulled down from a pair of facilities in March.
Notably, each of the debt-financing waves saw the involved company diversify in one way or another. Duetti started investing in different kinds of music IP in tandem with its announcement, while Influence last month emphasized a film and television JV component of its DJ Khaled tie-up.
Content shared from www.digitalmusicnews.com.