Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital has offered to buy Universal Music Group in a deal that values the world’s biggest record label at about €55bn and would shift its listing from Amsterdam to New York.
The proposed transaction would merge Universal, home to artists including Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar, with a blank-cheque company set up by Ackman, one of the world’s best-known hedge fund managers.
The move comes as the explosive growth of AI reverberates across the music industry, with investors fearful that the technology could erode profits at the handful of dominant labels and threaten their copyright.
Shares in Universal, which listed in Amsterdam in 2021 after it was spun out by French media group Vivendi, have slumped more than 30 per cent over the past six months.
The shares were up 11 per cent higher at €19 in afternoon trading on Tuesday after Pershing, which already owns a stake in Universal, set out the terms of a deal that it said valued the music company at €30.40 a share.
Announcing the plan, Ackman said: “UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and, importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”
Under the deal, Universal shareholders would receive €5.05 in cash — a total of €9.4bn — and 0.77 shares in the new company for every Universal share they owned, Pershing said.
Universal did not immediately respond to the proposal.
Ackman’s pursuit of Universal has been years in the making. Pershing Square built a roughly 10 per cent stake in 2021 ahead of the group’s Amsterdam listing.
The investment was originally planned to be executed through his pandemic-era blank cheque vehicle, but the structure collapsed under regulatory scrutiny. Ackman’s hedge fund stepped in instead, leaving Universal as one of Pershing Square’s largest positions.
Ackman joined Universal’s board and became a vocal champion of the company, arguing that ownership of music rights — from the Beatles to Taylor Swift — offered “forever” cash flows in the streaming era.
But Universal’s shares have lagged broader markets since the listing, and disagreements emerged over how to unlock value. Ackman pushed for changes including a US listing to attract a deeper pool of investors and improve liquidity.
He stepped down from the board in 2025 and trimmed his stake, but has continued to argue that Universal is undervalued. The takeover proposal is a sharp escalation of that campaign.
Last month, Universal delayed its own plan for a secondary listing in New York, saying that “uncertainty” had created a “meaningful dislocation” in the company’s valuation.
On Tuesday, Pershing claimed that uncertainty over the future of the billionaire Bolloré Group’s 18 per cent stake in Universal had depressed its valuation.
Vivendi, which is controlled by the Bolloré family, still holds a near-10 per cent stake. China’s Tencent is Universal’s second-largest shareholder with an 11.4 per cent stake.
Analysts at Panmure Liberum said the terms of the offer looked “in part designed to offer an exit for the Bolloré Group”.
The Bolloré Group did not respond to a request for comment. Vivendi declined to comment.
The new company would be chaired by former Disney president Michael Ovitz, with “two representatives” from Pershing also joining the board.
The deal would need to be approved by two-thirds of Universal’s shareholders, Ackman said.
Pershing added that the transaction would be subject to Sir Lucian Grainge staying on as Universal’s chief executive.
Pershing Square would put in €2.5bn, including €1.05bn from investors in Ackman’s blank-cheque vehicle Sparc Holdings, with the new Universal Music entity borrowing an additional €5.4bn, according to Ackman’s letter to the company’s board.
Universal’s stake in music streamer Spotify would also be sold for €1.5bn in net proceeds, Ackman added.
Matt Pincus, a longtime music investor who runs a LionTree-backed fund, is sceptical of Ackman’s proposal, likening it to the failed Spacs of the pandemic era.
“He’s saying: this is a 75 per cent premium to the value of Universal’s stock. But I’m only giving shareholders $5bn in cash, and the rest of it I’m giving them in a publicly listed blank cheque company, with the idea that simply moving it to a US listing creates the uplift. It’s basically ‘add water and you get a higher valuation’. But where is the real value creation?”
Some industry executives questioned whether the takeover attempt was intended to secure control of Universal, or to force through changes Ackman had advocated as a board member, such as the US listing.
Ackman is known for making multibillion-dollar bets on public companies that he regards as attractively priced, high-quality businesses with pricing power in their sectors. He has large stakes in companies such as Alphabet, Amazon and Brookfield, with his main hedge fund managing almost $18bn.
The hedge fund manager is in the middle of an IPO process for Pershing Square USA, a new closed-end fund to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Ackman aims to raise between $5bn and $10bn in a transaction that will also give investors a slice of his hedge fund’s management company.
Additional reporting by Adrienne Klasa in Paris
#Bill #Ackmans #Pershing #offers #buy #Universal #Music #55bn #deal
