More than a week after the sudden death of Michael Jackson, a clearer picture has emerged of the singer’s complicated and notoriously debt-ridden financial status.
Here’s what we know: Jackson’s death has already vastly improved his financial prospects, or rather, those of his children.
And the tangled financial mess in which he’d been mired will be sorted through by lawyers over the next months and, more likely, years. Sony/ATV will emerge as a big winner, as will AEG Live.
The frenzy of media coverage that followed Jackson’s death has led to all manner of misinformation about the performer’s finances. Granted, it’s complicated, and yes Jackson had defaulted on debts in recent years.
But his death has changed a lot of things: The performer’s album and digital sales have been record-breaking in the past week alone, and his final performance will be an instant best-seller in multiple formats for years to come.
In addition, Neverland is a potential cash cow, and the singer's estate owns his master recordings.
And that’s just the start.
“What about a Broadway show? What about a movie?” asked Charles Koppelman, Jackson's former music manager and financial adviser. “The unfortunate timing of Michael’s death gives his children and his family the opportunity to hold on to his financial and business legacy.”
TheWrap has learned that Jackson has been taking in about $7 million a year in revenue from the Sony/ATV catalogue, according to a knowledgeable music executive.
The catalogue is a vast trove of music including 250 of the Beatles’ most popular songs. Sony has been garnshing the rest of the revenue in a deal struck in 2007 in which the company agreed to service Jackson’s debts.
He also made between $5 and $10 million per year off his own music from his ownership of the MiJack catalogue. At the time, that was nowhere near enough to keep Jackson out of debt and in the lifestyle to which he’d become accustomed.
But all that has changed. Jackson is no longer present to spend cash he doesn’t have. His assets “will earn double what it was earning,” said Koppelman. “There is a real opportunity to restructure (his debt) and get things wound down so they can keep all those assets.”
Last week the New York Times could make only this general conclusion after analyzing the landscape: “No one really knows what is going on.”
By this week, plenty of people know. TheWrap breaks it down.
Who’s in charge?
John Branca, the music attorney, is named along with two other associates as the executors of Jackson’s estate in the only known will to emerge signed in 2002. He was brought back into Jackson’s circle just one week before the performer’s death.
The mysterious Dr. Tohme Tohme, a Lebanese advertising entrepreneur, was banished from Jackson’s inner circle a couple of months ago.
What are the assets?
Michael Jackson co-owns the Sony/ATV song catalogue, an asset estimated at $2 billion that includes not just Beatles songs but some 750,000 other song titles.
