Jamaican American Private Equity executive Sherrese Clarke Soares honored with Billboard’s Power 100 Event’s UBS & Billboard Trailblazer Award at Goya Studios in Hollywood on Wednesday night (Feb. 1).
Soares who is a major player in the music acquisition race and founder/CEO of HarbourView Equity Partners got emotional as she delivered her acceptance speech.
“Harbourview has been a dream of mine for many years in the making, and I feel grateful that I’m able to do my life’s work,” said the Harbourview Jamaica native.
“However, at the same time I experience the joy of receiving the recognition, my heart is heavy. At first I could not really sort why, but as I prepared to board my flight to head out West, the words hit me, ‘I just want to get home.’”
Clarke Soares was previously named one of Billboard’s Change Agents for 2021, while she was CEO/founder of Tempo Music. Former football player and head of sports & entertainment at UBS, Wale Ogunleye praised Soares for her dedication to promoting diversity in both her staff and investments, noting her “extremely diverse“ team and “culturally…and musically diverse“ portfolio of music catalogs.
The usually reserved daughter of Jamaican American immigrants got $1bn from Apollo Global Management to invest in music acquisition.
The former Morgan Stanley intern acquired all of Despacitio singer Luis Fonsi real name is Luis Alfonso Rodríguez López-Cepero’s catalogue for a reported $100 million through HarbourView Equity Partners.
The remix for “Despacito” with Justin Bieber reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 where it stayed for 16 consecutive weeks 5 years ago. “Despacito” also topped the Hot Latin Songs chart for a record 56 (non-consecutive) weeks, spending the most weeks at No. 1 for any title since the chart’s inception in 1986 according to Billboard.
In 2018, ‘Despacito’ earned the Guinness World Record for being the first video to reach 5 billion YouTube views.
Soares says investing in music catalogues are worth the investment: “It is safe retirement dollars to really put to work,” she told the Financial Times in January last year.
Soares who was named a Wallstreet Journal Woman To Watch has already snatched up 35 catalogues through HarbourView-Apollo partnership. Other than Luis Fonsi’s song book her company spent $40 million to acquire Usher’s share of Justin Beibers catalogue. HarbourView also owns songs from rapper Tech N9ne, George Jones and Trey Songz.
With no direct reggae catalogue announcements, she says, “I want to be the platform that sees the value in all these genres that live outside of legacy rock.”
“We can give a really good return for that type of risk. It’s safe retirement dollars to really put to work,” said Soares to the Financial Times as she goes on the hunt for music and media with a billion dollar check book.
