CFS to invest in music

Fund takes on popular classics

By Charlie Corbett
Tue 15 May 2007

Disco Inferno, Somebody to Love, Take Me Home Country Roads and Monster Mash, playing at a fund manager near you

Colonial First State (CFS) has seeded a new media fund with a copyright catalogue of 25,000 popular songs.

CFS, the asset management arm of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, announced yesterday it had bought almost all the music copyrights once owned by DreamWorks Music Publishing.

CFS now has the copyright over songs by music legends spanning from the 1950s to the present day.

The catalogue includes such classics as Disco Inferno, Somebody to Love, Take Me Home Country Roads and Monster Mash.

The fund will be rolled out by First State Media Group, a joint venture formed by CFS last year with the purpose of buying and managing media assets.

"Music copyright assets are attractive for investors because they generate global income streams in the form of predictable and recurring cash flows," CFS Global Asset Management chief executive Warwick Negus said.

"In addition, they hold considerable long-term growth potential through the active promotion and management of the underlying musical works."

The team will be led by Steve McMellon, a media specialist and managing director of the First State Media Group.

CFS Global Asset Management's head of strategy and development, Geordie Manolas, said the copyright catalogue was likely to be a foundation asset for a media-focused investment fund to be launched by the end of the year.

CFS bought the music rights from Dimensional Music Publishing for an undisclosed sum. They were originally built up by DreamWorks.

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