Hanging On The Telephone

The chairman of the firm that controls Blondie’s songwriting catalog says he’s "hanging on the telephone" and waiting for offers for the company.

Chris Wright, who founded Chrysalis 40 years ago, says he’s sitting on "a jewel of a business." But he’s skeptical about the prospects of receiving an attractive offer in the present economic climate.

He said the current environment of collapsing worldwide music sales might not be the best time to get "a knock-out offer."

"We think Chrysalis Music is very valuable to anybody, and we’re well aware of that," he told The Times. "I think I’d have to listen to any good offer; I only own 27 percent of the shares, not 100 percent, and I have to take cognisance of outside investors."

Chrysalis is one of the last large independent music publishers and controls songwriting copyrights for acts as varied as Blondie and Outkast. It’s been valued at about £120 million.

In the last five years Wright has hived off parts of what the Times described as a "mini-media conglomerate," which had interests in television, books and radio.

Wright and Doug Ellis created it as a record company in 1969, apparently naming it after a fusion of Chris and Ellis, selling 50 percent to EMI in 1989 and the rest a couple of years later.

Wright would appear to prefer to wait for a sale but may find it hard to convince his fellow investors that there will be an upturn in the music business in general, although the publisher’s own figures show that profits have risen from £2.3 million to £3 million, despite turnover falling 7 percent to £35.1 million.