'Northern Songs' was a company founded in 1963 holding primarily the publishing rights to the majority of songs attributed to 'Lennon & McCartney', 'George Harrison' and 'Ringo Starr'. In 1968, unbeknown to The Beatles the major shareholder [Dick James] sold his shares to 'ATV Music Publishing' [Lew Grade]. The Beatles were unable to do anything to prevent this. ATV was subsequently sold to an Australian Industrialist, Robert Holmes a Court, in the early 1980s, and eyeing a fast profit he almost immediately put the catalog(s) up for sale. Coincidentally, at approximately the same time, Paul McCartney had been advising Michael Jackson, during their musical collaboration, of the financial value in investing in music publishing. Even though McCartney and Yoko Ono were offered the opportunity to purchase the archive, Jackson would become the new owner, after negotiating this complicated loan agreement with Chemical Bank [later to be JP Morgan/Chase], which, although for an extraordinary large sum of money, was deemed by the bank to be of high quality with little risk, given the value of the catalog and the value of the borrower.