Cultura Voice

France-based media giant Vivendi will appoint “several investment banks” tomorrow (July 25) for the sale of up to 50% of its subsidiary Universal Music Group (UMG). Today’s news, reported by Reuters citing a source close to the matter, follows Vivendi’s assertion last month that it is “very confident” the UMG sale process will be ignited by the end of the year. When Vivendi initially announced its intention to sell off up to half of UMG last July, it suggested that it could possibly complete the UMG process by the end of January 2020. In May this year, a Bloomberg report suggested that Vivendi was facing difficulties in the sale process of UMG, citing sources who said that “some private equity investors balk at the high price and slow pace of the deal”. 5th Passenger (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Ramin Kousha That report also revealed that Vivendi held preliminary sale talks with Tencent Holdings about making a minori...

The world’s investment banks may be salivating over the prospect of Vivendi selling a stake in Universal Music Group – but that’s not the only major financial story about to hit the global music industry. MBW has today verified that Kobalt Music Group (KMG) is in the process of raising the largest funding round in its history. The raise is taking place at KMG – which owns Kobalt Music Publishing, Kobalt Neighbouring Rights, recorded music operation AWAL and collection society AMRA. It is separate to Kobalt Capital, which is an acquisitive fund managed by KMG. Kobalt is now talking to investment banks to pull together the funding, MBW’s sources tell us. Kobalt’s largest raise to date came in 2017, when it absorbed $89m across two investment rounds – one for $75m led by Hearst Entertainment and a further $14m from Section 32, the US-based venture capital fund created by Bill Maris, who was formerly head of Google Ventures. Operation Red Sea (Origina...

Big money is back in the music business. On Tuesday (April 25), Vivendi announced to its shareholders that certain investment banks had valued Universal Music Group at an enormous €20bn ( $22bn ). That’s a whopping 31-times multiple on Universal’s last annual EBITDA of €644m ( $700m ). Makes you think: why would someone part with such a gigantic sum to ingest Sir Lucian Grainge’s company? According to Vivendi, that’s not on the cards: the valuation apparently came from banks encouraging Vincent Bollore and co. to float UMG on the stock market. (As if the music industry doesn’t have enough hopeful IPO attempts going on right now…) However, other bankers are reportedly telling Vivendi to sell off 10-15% of Universal to realize a chunk of cash – which the French group could then use to fund acquisitions. At a €20bn valuation, a 15% slice of UMG would set back a potential investor €3bn ( $3.3bn ) – funnily enough, the same price Len Blavatnik paid to buy the whole of Warner Mus...