Alexi Cory-Smith, co-founder and CEO of London-based catalog agency Bella Figura Music, and previously an govt at BMG’s U.Okay. division, has died. She was 58.
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“We’re devastated to announce the sudden and surprising passing of our co-founder and CEO, Alexi Cory-Smith,” stated a press release launched on Friday (July 3) by Bella Figura, who manages the rights of evergreen hits like Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” and The Human League’s “Don’t You Need Me.”
“Alexi constructed Bella Figura Music from the bottom up, bringing the imaginative and prescient and fervour from a profitable profession within the music business. Her management, creativity, and unwavering dedication to our workforce and our work leaves an enduring legacy,” the agency stated in remembrance of Cory-Smith.
“Our ideas are with Alexi’s household and family members throughout this extremely troublesome time,” the assertion continued. “We ask that their privateness be revered. We’re dedicated to honouring Alexi’s imaginative and prescient and achievements and can share additional updates after we are ready. Within the meantime, our focus is on supporting each other and remembering a unprecedented chief who meant a lot to all of us.”
In a press release despatched to Billboard, BPI (British Recorded Music Business) CEO Jo Twist stated, “We’re profoundly saddened to be taught of the passing of Alexi Cory-Smith. She made a extremely valued contribution as a number one determine in our music business, together with as BPI Council member when representing BMG, and we lengthen our honest condolences to her household, mates and colleagues on their nice loss.”
Cory-Smith opened the doorways of Bella Figura in 2022 alongside longtime colleague Neelesh Prabhu.
“For us, it’s high quality, class, it’s profitable, it’s curatable. I started Bella Figura with a quite simple factor: I wished to personal my very own publishing firm,” Cory-Smith stated in an interview on The Cash Trench podcast, talking of her flip to entrepreneurship after accumulating years {of professional} expertise throughout main labels.
Of placing every part into Bella Figura, she famous, “It’s the very best factor I ever did in my life, personally, selfishly and professionally. I really like this enterprise … It’s studying and doing and making errors all on the similar time, nevertheless it’s implausible. It’s the factor I’m proudest of. It’s the factor, I like it, I stand up on daily basis tremendous excited.”
As of 2025, Bella Figura had amassed a portfolio value greater than $160 million. The London-based agency made a push into the U.S. market, bringing on business vet Gary Gersh to open an workplace in Los Angeles final yr.
An acquisition of producer/songwriter Paul Epworth’s publishing catalog in April 2026 added extra main hits to the agency’s rising assortment — together with co-writes and productions from Adele’s 21 (“Rolling within the Deep”) and the James Bond theme “Skyfall,” and his work from Florence + The Machine’s Lungs and Ceremonials albums. “For us, buying Paul’s catalog defines what Bella Figura was constructed to do,” Cory-Smith stated on the time. “His physique of labor speaks for itself. Songs which have moved a whole lot of thousands and thousands of individuals and stand the take a look at of time.”
Earlier than launching Bella Figura, Cory-Smith held notable management roles at BMG U.Okay. over the course of a number of years — final serving as president, repertoire and advertising, on the time of her departure from the corporate in 2017. There, she led the label’s publishing and recordings enterprise, spearheading relationships with key artists together with the Rolling Stones and Roger Waters.
“The Rolling Stones deal — nicely, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards particularly, as a result of it was about them as writers and the songs — that was for me, a turning level. Very distinctly,” she stated in her look on The Cash Trench, recounting a milestone skilled accomplishment.
Previous to BMG, she labored at Virgin, EMI and extra, after transferring her method up from being what she humbly described as “principally workplace junior, lady Friday, do all of it” at her first job within the enterprise, at IRS Data.
Unaware of the alternatives that she’d sooner or later make for herself within the music business, she initially thought she’d be a legal lawyer. “I used to be going to avoid wasting the harmless man from the institution,” she recalled on The Cash Trench. Although legal legislation wasn’t her calling, she discovered she beloved the work of creating a deal and did pursue a legislation diploma she’d apply to her profession in music, earlier than delving into studying and changing into an skilled within the publishing enterprise.
“It was value each second and each penny and each tear,” she stated of the work she and her workforce have put into constantly constructing Bella Figura. “I don’t remorse a second, nevertheless it wasn’t straightforward.”
“I’d prefer it to go and go,” she stated of her imaginative and prescient of her agency’s future.
