The rights to Liverpool's Kop anthem You'll Never Walk Alone have been snapped up for £140m by Imagen music along with the catalogue of US composers Rodgers and Hammersetin.
Broadway's best-known collection of show tunes was seen to be a safer investment than stocks and shares and the Dutch-backed consortium beat off a bid from Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The lucrative rights to The Sound of Music and others written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were sold by their daughters to Imagem Music, the owner of the Boosey & Hawkes classical library.
It also includes the rights to 1945 hit musical Carousel, which features the Anfield Anthem, made famous by Gerry Marsden.
Imagem, controlled by ABP, the Dutch pension fund, was able to see off competition from, among others, EMI, Sony/ATV and Lord Lloyd-Webber, whose works are represented by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organisation (R&H) in the United States.
But the buyers will have to persuade Lord Lloyd-Webber to keep his business with them. Revenue from his shows accounts for about a quarter of the R&H business and a change-of-control clause allows the British composer to find a new US licensee.
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