Today is David Bowie's birthday. Bowie is one of my all time favourite musical personalities and there's been a lot of press around today praising his successes and impact on the creative world. I only found out today that Prudential Insurance have floated Bowie on the futures market in the form of Bowie Bonds - apparently one of the first ever instances of intellectual property secutisation.
In 2004 they were lowered to junk status due to the spiralling failures of the music industry to pick up sales but recent progress with the iTunes store has renewed interest in the bonds, which have a 7.9% yield, higher than US government treasury bonds.