Hartbeat, a global multiplatform media created by comedian, Kevin Hart has raised $100 million from Abry Partners, a private equity firm in Boston. The new deal qualifies Abry to own a 15% stake in HartBeat which is more than $650 million.
Heartbeat is a result of a merger between the two businesses of the entertainer; ‘Hartbeat Production’ and ‘Laugh Out loud’ into a single entity.
According to NYTimes, the merger talk had initially been raised during a retreat in July 2021 at Los Cabos in Mexico, where both companies got reacquainted after months of remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Per Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, people who have not satisfied their basic needs like food and shelter, cannot aspire to things like accountability, self-actualisation, and esteem.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, food takes up over 55% of the average Nigerian household’s expenditure.
Hence, there’s some credence to back the maxim, “Every Nigerian product is competing with food”. Only this time, morality and accountability are also competing.
Several Nigerians only have to look up to a political system fully laden with corruption to base their moral judgments.
Entitled borrowers
Besides increasing hardship and a messy social fabric, there’s some degree of entitlement with the average Nigerian.
Look no further than the ABS loan scheme referenced above, where some farmers reportedly thought that the loan from the federal government was free money.
The widespread defaults in payments led to court proceedings being filed against the farmers. All other methods, including setting up a debt recovery committee proved fruitless.
“It doesn’t also help that the consequences for defaulting on loans are not widely known. Neither do they care to know that money lent to them is actually other people’s money,” Olowe argues.
The psychology of debt recovery in Nigeria deserves a closer look, but just that feeling of not wanting to pay could be a major factor for loan defaults in the country.
Financial illiteracy
One of the main reasons why people struggle with money is a lack of financial literacy. Sadly, that is largely the case in Nigeria.
The CBN’s report on Financial literacy reveals that 53% of Nigerian adults do not know, or only have a rough idea of, what they spent in the past week.
Moves by the Nigerian government to build a digital economy are beginning to gain traction as private investors continue to explore the country’s data centre space. At the last count, the country has seen four new data centre facilities sited on its shores over the last five months.
This development is racking up foreign investments in the country’s ICT sector, which had suffered a steady decline in FDIs over the past four years according to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
A data centre is a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings, used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. While some of these facilities have been completed and are actively in operation, others are still under construction.
In lieu of the development, Hart, who has since controlled HartBeat will step aside as the CEO but remain the chairman of the board while the chief operating officer of both Laugh Out Loud and HartBeat Productions, Thai Randolph will serve as the CEO.
Similarly, Bryan Smiley of Hartbeat Production will head content and Jeff Clanagan of Laugh Out Loud will be in charge of distribution as both also lead as president. Also, Leland Wigington, Hartbeat Productions co-founder will lead a new production banner under Hartbeat.
Abry is a private equity investment firm in North America founded in 1989 and has since completed several leveraged transactions and other private equity or preferred equity placements.
