Michael Jackson had debt of £300m at the final curtain

Published on Friday 26 June 2009 23:11

HE was one of the most successful entertainers of all time, but Michael Jackson died with as much as £300 million debt.

The singer's extravagant and bizarre lifestyle, lawsuits and even charity donations left him in a massive financial hole.

His major comeback tour of 50 shows at the O2 Arena in London was expected to put him back on top – the first ten shows alone would have earned him about 50m.

The Jackson estate includes copyrights to his own songs and a stake in the Beatles' catalogue worth more than 600m, said a music industry source.

Jackson became the first entertainer to earn more than $100m, according to Guinness World Records, with albums such as Thriller, the biggest- selling pop album of all time.

He paid 29m for ATV Music, which owned the copyright to songs by Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

In 1988 he bought the 2,500-acre ranch he named Neverland for 9m in the hills of Santa Barbara County, California. And in 1991 he signed a recording deal with Sony worth 40m.

But allegations of child abuse in 1993 launched years of financial trouble for the star, forcing Jackson to settle out of court with the family of a 13-year-old boy for a reported 13m.

The ongoing cash challenges forced him to merge ATV with Sony's library of songs, selling them publishing rights for 57m. Then in 2001 he used half of his ATV assets as collateral to secure a 121m loan. He refinanced those loans in 2006 in a bid to stave off insolvency.

Jackson's spending sprees were put on very public display during an interview with Martin Bashir in 2003. In Living with Michael Jackson, Bashir and Jackson visited a shopping centre and blew more than a million dollars in one visit.

The 2003 arrest of Jackson on charges of molesting a second 13-year-old boy led to forensic accountants poring over his finances and revealing at the subsequent 2005 trial that he was spending 12-18m more per year than he earned.

Time and again he found a way to wring cash out of high-value assets, borrowing tens of millions at a time or leaning on wealthy friends for advice, if not for money.

Yet he kept facing financial hurdles and lawsuits, including a 4m claim from Sheik Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the second son of the king of Bahrain.

In March last year Jackson faced foreclosure on Neverland. Billionaire Thomas Barrack, chair and CEO of Los Angeles-based real estate investment firm Colony Capital LLC, agreed to bail out the singer and set up a joint venture with Jackson that took ownership of Neverland.

Mr Barrack told a newspaper last month that the estate could fetch 24-48m at least.

The true picture of Jackson's finances may be revealed in the coming days and weeks. Forbes reported that he was making 45m a year from his publishing partnership with Sony alone. On top of his Beatles collection, he also bought the rights to songs by Eminem, Shakira and Beck in a 2007 deal.