Deal sheet
- Status
- Unresolved. Both proposals remain non-binding. No merger agreement has been filed as at 4 September 2026.
- Type
- Acquisition
- Parties
- Reservoir Media, Wesbild, Inc., Richmond Hill Investment Co., LP, Irenic Capital Management LP
- Amount
- USD 10.50 per share in cash (Wesbild/Richmond Hill). Irenic proposed 10.00 to 11.00 per share. Aggregate deal value not disclosed in any filing reviewed.
- Rights covered
- Equity control of Reservoir Media, Inc., the Nasdaq-listed parent. No music rights change hands directly: no catalogue, master or publishing interest is transferred by either proposal. Reservoir's African and MENA assets, the Lebo M publishing catalogue and its controlling stake in PopArabia FZ-LLC (which owns 100COPIES and Viral Wave), would sit beneath a new owner of the parent.
- Territory
- Reservoir Media, Inc. is a Delaware corporation listed on Nasdaq. Effect on assets is worldwide, including South Africa (Lebo M catalogue), Egypt (100COPIES) and the wider MENA region (PopArabia, Viral Wave).
- Announced
- 2026-03-03
- Primary document
- Regulatory filing
- Sources
- Proposal letter dated 3 March 2026, Exhibit 99.1 to Schedule 13D/A filed 4 March 2026 (accession 0001140361-26-007759) · Reservoir Media 10-K for the year ended 31 March 2026, Recent Developments: both proposals, their dates and prices, the Special Committee, Morgan Stanley and Wachtell Lipton · Reservoir Media 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, filed 4 August 2026: status unchanged, no assurance of any definitive agreement · Irenic Capital Management LP Schedule 13D/A Amendment No. 5, filed 2 March 2026: its own proposal at 10.00 to 11.00 per share, 6,106,176 shares, 9.3 per cent · Reservoir Media DEF 14A filed 26 June 2026: Wesbild and affiliates 44 per cent, ER Reservoir LLC 21 per cent, Irenic 9 per cent, Hassan Khosrowshahi named as the father of the chief executive, Ryan P. Taylor named as a sitting director · Reservoir Media 8-K filed 11 August 2026: results of the 6 August 2026 annual meeting, all three Class II nominees elected · Reservoir Media investor presentation, 18 August 2026: 9.89 dollar share price and 651m dollar market capitalisation at 30 June 2026, no mention of the proposals
Read this before citing: This is a proposed change of ownership of a listed parent company, not a sale of any catalogue. Do NOT report it as anyone acquiring PopArabia, 100COPIES, Viral Wave or the Lebo M catalogue. Those assets are not parties to either proposal and no filing reviewed says their administration, distribution or licensing arrangements would change. Both proposals are expressly non-binding: Reservoir's own language, repeated verbatim in its 10-K and its 10-Q, is that there can be no assurance any definitive agreement will result from either of them. No aggregate deal value is stated in any filing reviewed, so none is recorded here; the per-share price is the only figure either bidder has put in a document. Two Reservoir filings disagree on the date the Special Committee was announced: the 10-K says 4 March 2026, the DEF 14A filed 26 June 2026 says 5 March 2026. Neither is treated as settled. The Special Committee's membership is not named in any filing reviewed and could not be established. The FY2026 10-K does not name 100COPIES or Lebo M; those holdings rest on this publication's separate records 642 and 1899 and on Reservoir's Exhibit 21.1 subsidiary schedules, not on the documents cited here.
Two of Reservoir Media, Inc.‘s own shareholders have proposed to take the company private. Neither proposal is a catalogue sale. What is on the table is equity control of the Nasdaq-listed parent company that sits above the Lebo M publishing catalogue, the Abu Dhabi publisher PopArabia, the Cairo label 100COPIES and the MENA distributor Viral Wave.
Reservoir’s annual report for the year ended 31 March 2026 sets out both proposals in the company’s own words:
- 12 February 2026. An unsolicited, non-binding and conditional indication of interest from Irenic Capital Management LP to acquire all of Reservoir’s outstanding equity at between $10.00 and $11.00 per share in cash.
- 3 March 2026. An unsolicited, preliminary non-binding proposal from Richmond Hill Investment Co., LP and Wesbild, Inc. to acquire all outstanding shares not already owned by them at $10.50 per share in cash.
Reservoir calls the pair of them “the Proposals”. The primary document for this record is the Wesbild and Richmond Hill letter itself, filed on 4 March 2026 as an exhibit to a Schedule 13D amendment.
What the letter says
The letter is signed by Ryan P. Taylor, managing partner of Richmond Hill, and Hassan Khosrowshahi, chairman of Wesbild. It states that “Wesbild, together with its affiliates, beneficially owns approximately 44% of the outstanding shares of common stock of the Company.”
On price, the letter says $10.50 is “approximately 39% over the closing price on February 25, 2026, the trading day immediately prior to the day that the Company’s receipt of an unsolicited acquisition offer was first publicly reported, and approximately 41% over the 90-day volume-weighted average trading price.” It puts the implied enterprise value to EBITDA multiple, on the midpoint of Reservoir’s own fiscal 2026 guidance, at “approximately 15.6x”.
Three conditions matter. The transaction “would not be subject to any financing contingency or condition”. The investors “will not move forward with the Proposal unless it is approved by” a special committee of independent and disinterested directors. And they state they “are interested only in acquiring the outstanding common stock”, adding that neither is “interested in selling shares in the Company to a third party”. That last sentence is the one that closes the door on a rival buying the company outright, because a 44 per cent holder who will not sell can block a merger.
No aggregate price is disclosed
None of the filings reviewed states a total equity or enterprise value for either proposal. This record therefore carries the per-share price only. Reservoir’s own investor presentation of 18 August 2026 gives a market capitalisation of $651m and 66m shares outstanding as at 30 June 2026, with the stock at $9.89, but that is a market figure and not a stated deal value, and it is not used here as one.
Where it stands
Reservoir formed a special committee of independent and disinterested directors to evaluate the Proposals. On 1 May 2026 it announced that the committee had engaged Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC as financial adviser and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz as legal counsel.
As at the most recent Reservoir periodic report reviewed, the quarterly report for the period ended 30 June 2026 filed on 4 August 2026, the company’s language is unchanged: “There can be no assurance that any definitive agreement will result from either of the Proposals or that any transaction will be consummated with Irenic, Richmond Hill, Wesbild or any other party.”
No Item 1.01 current report disclosing a merger agreement appears in Reservoir’s EDGAR filing index through 4 September 2026. The company’s most recent filing, an investor presentation dated 18 August 2026, does not mention the Proposals at all. The outcome is unresolved.
A documented inconsistency
Reservoir’s annual report says the special committee was announced “On March 4, 2026”. Its proxy statement filed 26 June 2026 says “on March 5, 2026, we announced that the Board formed a special committee”. The two filings give different dates for the same announcement. This record uses 3 March 2026, the date of the proposal letter, as the announced date, and notes the discrepancy rather than resolving it.
Full analysis: Reservoir Media Take-Private: $10.50 a Share, Two Bidders, No Deal
