Thorn EMI Buys Filmtrax Catalogue for $115 Million : Music: The huge collection of songs owned by the company includes ‘Stormy Weather’ and ‘Against All Odds.’

Thorn EMI, the British music and lighting supply conglomerate that has been on a music buying binge in recent years, agreed Wednesday to acquire the music publishing company Filmtrax for as much as $115 million.

The 90,000-song catalogue of London-based Filmtrax includes such compositions as “Stormy Weather,” “Against All Odds” and “The Greatest Love of All.”

Its acquisition would come on top of Thorn’s recent investment in Chrysalis Records and Enigma Records as well as its purchase of the SBK music catalogue last year for $295 million. The addition of Filmtrax would make Thorn one of the world’s largest music publishing concerns, with more than 600,000 titles.

“Filmtrax group . . . will enhance our ability to excel in a marketplace with ever-increasing demands for music in all areas of the media,” said Charles Koppelman, chairman and chief executive of EMI Music Publishing. “We believe we can take the catalogue and really increase its earnings” by more aggressively marketing the music overseas and to U.S. television and movie producers.

Thorn’s offer for Filmtrax is lower than some analysts had expected and could foreshadow a cooling in the current red-hot market for song catalogues.

CBS Records last year offered to purchase Filmtrax for $140 million before backing out of the deal, according to Koppelman. Meanwhile, Motown Records founder Barry Gordy Jr. has had his 15,000-title Jobete Music catalogue on the block for nearly a year.

But other experts say Filmtrax, which lost an estimated $1.7 million on revenue of $22 million in the year ended March 31, 1989, is a special case because it derives a significant part of its revenue from administering music copyrights owned by other companies rather than owning most of its songs outright. These experts say the market for most music publishing catalogues remains robust.

“I’m not seeing any softening,” said Nashville lawyer Malcolm L. Mimms Jr., a contributing editor to the Entertainment Law and Finance trade newsletter who has written articles on how to value music catalogues.

“The demand for quality catalogues is still every bit as intense as it has been over the last few years,” added John Frankenheimer, a partner in the Los Angeles law firm Loeb & Loeb. He predicted that demand would increase with the unification of 12 European economies next year and the expanded opportunities in Europe to market music.

Filmtrax, founded in 1984, is principally owned by Ensign Trust--the investment vehicle of the United Kingdom Merchant Navy Officers Pension Fund--and John Hall, a longtime British record industry executive who is now chief executive and founder of Filmtrax.

Thorn’s contract to buy Filmtrax includes an agreement to administer the copyrights of musical scores from any of Columbia Pictures Entertainment’s motion pictures or television divisions until 1993.

Although Thorn agreed to pay up to $115 million for Filmtrax, the final purchase price will be determined after Thorn examines Filmtrax’s financial books. Ensign Trust has already agreed to accept an undisclosed amount of Thorn EMI stock for the acquisition. The other Filmtrax shareholders can elect to be paid in cash, Thorn EMI shares or a group of special securities.

Interest in music publishing catalogues had been growing rapidly since 1985, when singer Michael Jackson paid $50 million for a British company that controlled the copyrights to nearly all of the Beatles’ songs.

Last month, Los Angeles-based Warner/Chappell Music Inc. completed its purchase of Mighty Three Music for about $15 million, leaving Barry Gordy’s Jobete Music as one of the last independently owned song catalogues.