Convertible Grunge

Date: Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Author: Trader Daily

Kurt Cobain must be spinning in his grave. Earlier this year, a hedge fund–backed music-publishing company, Primary Wave, negotiated a deal to buy a 25 percent stake in Nirvana's catalog, giving it the right to license the band's songs for movies and television. Fees could top $50,000 a song.

The hedge fund that backs Primary Wave, Plainfield Asset Management, was founded by a former managing director at D.E. Shaw in 2005 and has roughly $1 billion under management. Cobain’s anti-establishment music enriching a hedge fund might once have seemed unthinkable -- but with Courtney Love in the mix, anything is possible.