Billionaire Bill Ackman’s Offers To Purchase Universal Music Group

Follow Forbes Talks Shares of Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record label that houses artists like Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar, surged early Tuesday after billionaire Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square offered to buy the company in a transaction worth about $64 billion. KEY FACTS Shares of UMG are up nearly 10% as of 9 a.m. EST on Tuesday, hours after Ackman’s Pershing Square announced a bid to buy the major record label. Pershing Square offered to purchase UMG—which is listed on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange—in a transaction that would value the company at €30.40, or about $35.13, per share, and pay €9.4 billion, or $10.86 billion, in cash to UMG shareholders. The transaction would merge the record label with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, and it would shift UMG’s primary stock listing from Amsterdam to the New York Stock Exchange. Ackman said he is looking to buy UMG because its “stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business,” citing the postponement of UMG’s New York stock listing, uncertainty over billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s 18% stake, underutilization of its balance sheet and suboptimal investor relations, among other issues. The deal proposed a new employment contract and compensation agreement for UMG CEO Lucian Grainge, and Ackman said the board would be “refreshed” to include Michael Ovitz, co-founder and former chairman of Creative Arts Agency, as its chair with two additional representatives from Pershing Square and members of the current UMG board. Ackman said the cash portion of the transaction would be funded with about $2.9 billion in cash from Pershing Square, $6.2 billion in debt financing and $1.7 billion from selling UMG’s stake in Spotify. BACKGROUND Ackman previously expressed interest in UMG in 2021, vowing to buy a 10% stake in UMG through his SPAC, but he abandoned the deal after pushback from regulators. He purchased a 10% stake instead through Pershing Square, and he sat on the company’s board of directors until he resigned in 2025, citing other commitments. While on the board, Ackman pushed for UMG to shift to a New York stock listing, saying in 2024 the company “trades at a large discount to its intrinsic value with limited liquidity in significant part due to it not having its primary listing” in the United States. Ackman noted in a slide deck posted to his X account Tuesday morning UMG’s shares are down 39% from its peak two years ago, saying it is “trading near an all-time low.” CHIEF CRITICS Nicolas Marmurek, an analyst at Square Global, told Bloomberg the proposal “looks very much dead from the start” unless Bolloré supports the acquisition. “We doubt Bolloré will accept such terms, and had Bolloré been on board he would be recommending the transaction. This is very much a move by Pershing Square to put the proposal in front of shareholders,” Marmurek said. Read the full story on Forbes: By Conor Murray https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/04/07/universal-music-group-shares-surge-after-bill-ackmans-pershing-square-offers-to-purchase-label/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices