History: Early Years Of The Beatles

Financial losses by the parent company of ATV Music prompted the sale of the division in 1981. McCartney made a bid for Northern Songs but the entire ATV Music division was sold to Australian business magnate Robert Holmes à Court. In 1985, ATV Music was sold to Michael Jackson for a reported $47 million, trumping a joint bid by McCartney and Yoko Ono. The acquisition gave Jackson control over the publishing rights to more than 200 songs composed by Lennon and McCartney.
Jackson and Sony merged their music publishing businesses in 1995, becoming joint owners of most Lennon-McCartney songs, although Lennon's estate and McCartney still receive their respective share of the royalties. Some of their earliest songs were published by an EMI subsidiary, Ardmore & Beechwood, before Lennon and McCartney signed with James. McCartney acquired the publishing rights to "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You" from Ardmore in the 1980s.