MERCK MAKES MARKET MOVE

Merck Mercuriadis’ Hipgnosis Songs Fund Limited will be added to the FTSE 250 Index after the market closes on 3/20. The Hipgnosis board and investment adviser The Family (Music) Limited made the announcement following confirmation from the FTSE Russell, which operates the indexes of the London Stock Exchange.

In composing this item, we Yanks admittedly had to do a bit of boning up on all of the above financial lingo. The FTSE 250 is a cap-weighted index consisting of the 101st to the 350th largest companies listed on the LSE. As you may have deduced, the FTSE 100 Index lists the 100 largest companies traded on the Exchange.

“This is a tremendous achievement in only 20 months,” Merck enthused in the release, “and I would like to thank our investors and our incredible songwriters for their belief and helping us to firmly establish proven songs as an asset class. We now have a strong track record in raising money, investing it in great songs, managing them well and paying dividends. We have a tremendous pipeline in place to continue, in what are very challenging times, to give the financial community access to these wonderful assets that have very low correlation to wider markets.”

Hipgnosis has raised more than £625m ($805m) in gross equity capital through its IPO in July 2018, and subsequent issues in April, August and October 2019. Last September, the company transferred its entire issued-share capital to the Premium listing segment of the Official List of the FCA (the U.K.’s securities regulator) and to the Premium segment of the LSE's Main Market.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled monosyllabic drivel.