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*Michael Jackson announced Thursday that he struck a deal with creditors that will keep him out of the welfare line.
A statement issued his reps in Bahrain said he has "restructured his finances" with help from Sony Corp., which jointly owns the collection of more than 200 Beatles tunes through Sony/ATV Music Publishing. It added that Citigroup bank "structured the transaction for the parties."
In 1985, Jackson purchased the ATV catalog for $48 million. Ten years later, Sony and Jackson formed a joint venture combining Sony Music Publishing and the ATV Music Publishing catalog, which also includes thousands more songs from such artists as Little Richard, Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley. The entire catalog is reportedly valued at about $1 billion.
Jackson had used his stake in the catalog as collateral for about $270 million in loans that were sold last year to a New York-based investment company.
The loans, which formally came due in December 2005, are held by the Fortress Investment Group, a New York private equity fund that was in position to gain Jackson's 50 percent interest in Beatles publishing rights, valued at some $500 million, in the event of a default.
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