Market Bankrolls Power’s Festivals

A few days before Prince headlined his Hop Farm Music Festival, Vince Power raised £6.5 million by floating his Music Festivals company on the Alternative Investment Market exchange.

The money will be used to secure full ownership of Hop Farm and Spain’s Benicassim Festival, plus starting up three more festivals in the UK.

The float also saw the departure of former Music Festival stakeholders such as top UK promoter Denis Desmond and the Workers Beer Company, who both used it to cash in their shares.

The trading opened at 67.5 pence and settled slightly lower at 66.5 pence at the end of the first day.

Power said the listing was the first quoted pure music festivals business on the market and will “give everyone the chance to own a part of the thriving live music industry.”

His five-year plan is said to include buying his current festivals outright, setting up three more festivals and expanding the operation by lengthening the duration of the festivals and even twinning events.

When he ran Mean Fiddler Organisation, which he sold to Desmond and Live Nation for £39 million in 2005, he revived Reading Festival by twinning it with a new Leeds Festival.

This year’s Hop Farm July 1-3 also had Morrissey, Eagles, Lou Reed, Iggy And The Stooges, Patti Smith, Newton Faulkner, Imelda May, Tinie Tempah, Chrissie Hynde & JP Jones, Damien Dempsey, Brandon Flowers, and Death Cab For Cutie.