The Amstelveen, Netherlands, headquarters of KPMG, the newly appointed auditor of Hipgnosis Songs Fund. Photograph Credit score: DennisM
One other day, one other Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF) shakeup: After delaying the publication of its half-year earnings, the troubled songs fund has formally appointed a brand new auditor.
HSF revealed the brand new auditor, changing PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), through a proper launch immediately. The transfer has arrived following all method of operational difficulties for Hipgnosis, chief amongst them buyers’ rejection of an enormous catalog sale and the fund’s continuation.
Notably, although, on the identical annual and extraordinary basic conferences the place the latter votes befell, irked HSF shareholders additionally overwhelmingly supported the reappointment of PwC, which had been named auditor in 2019.
“TO re-appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers CI LLP,” reads the third unusual decision on which buyers voted in October, “who’ve indicated their willingness to proceed in workplace, as Auditor of the Firm to carry workplace till the conclusion of the subsequent annual basic assembly of the Firm in 2024.”
All instructed, 98.23 p.c of solid votes favored protecting PwC on board, in keeping with the conferences’ outcomes. However in late November, amid a decidedly vital planning course of as to the way forward for the corporate, and as a lawsuit filed by the liquidators of a defunct Hipgnosis entity was heating up, HSF disclosed a young course of for a brand new auditor.
PwC, having evidently rethought the matter between the late-October investor votes and HSF’s late-November announcement, had “indicated they won’t be taking part within the tender,” Hipgnosis made clear on the time. The songs fund additional communicated that it could “verify the brand new auditor in the end.”
Now, as initially talked about, the entity has finalized this due-course determination, tapping one other “Large 4” accounting agency, KPMG, as auditor “with rapid impact for the monetary yr ended” March thirty first, 2024.
At one other basic assembly “to be convened in the end,” buyers could have the prospect to vote on the appointment of KPMG, referring particularly to KPMG Channel Islands Restricted, HSF famous. Whereas the exact timing related to this vote stays to be seen, way more pressing is the present late-April deadline for HSF’s board to submit proposals for the way forward for the songs fund.
Forward of this cutoff, which may conceivably be delayed with the approval of buyers, December has seen Hipgnosis Songs Fund appoint a veteran activist investor to its board and promote the rights to some 20,000 songs at a steep low cost. When the market closed immediately, HSF inventory (LON: SONG) was price about 71 pence per share.