News in brief

“I am pretty optimistic about 2026 and very optimistic about 2027,” Antares Capital CEO Tim Lyne said on an early October Credit Exchange with Lisa Lee podcast episode.

This surge in confidence comes after the US Federal Reserve implemented a small rate cut and the giant Electronic Arts deal was completed. A group that included Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, agreed to take the video game company private in a USD 55bn deal last month, and the broadly syndicated loan market plans on backing this buyout with USD 20bn in debt.

“This deal... is a pretty big positive for the market overall,” Lyne said. It may point to a much needed pick up in volume.

Limited partners in funds want liquidity and private equity sponsors need to sell their companies. “It’s going to happen,” Lyne said, even if those exits end up happening in the middle of 2026 and into 2027.

The uncertain macroeconomic environment has been a challenge for private equity firms trying to time an exit, but the market is becoming more accustomed to the uncertainty, Lyne said.

This year has also been spent trying to figure out how tariffs might impact various companies, but market players are learning to adjust to the surprises coming out of the Trump administration and seeing them as the new norm, as opposed to an anomaly.

Securitising music revenues is nothing new. David Bowie pioneered the trend when he issued ‘Bowie Bonds’ in 1997, backed by his future music royalties.

Now, financial sponsors are reviving the power of music securitisation, helped by a booming streaming market. In the past three years, companies backed by Apollo and Blackstone have issued new music ABS.

Recognition Music, majority owned by Blackstone, is a case in point. The company issued Lyra Music Assets Series 2025-1, an ABS backed by a USD 2.95bn catalogue of 47,000 songs including Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ and Eurhythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)’.

Turning choruses into cashflow has been boosted by platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Streaming revenue — with its recurring, regular cashflows — is ripe to be securitised. Blackstone’s recent deal also includes publishing and record royalties, and proceeds from songs’ distribution and licensing.

The adage that the old songs are the best also still rings true. It’s easier to gauge whether an older song will be a flash-in the-pan hit or a staple of listeners’ playlists for years to come.

This can tilt portfolios away from more recent hits. Blackstone’s latest deal has a weighted average vintage of 2004, and over half of the top 10 songs by revenue in the deal were released in the 80s and 90s.

While a song can be timeless, cashflows certainly aren’t.