Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square on Tuesday offered to acquire Universal Music Group in a bid valuing the company at about $64 billion.
The proposal would move the world’s largest record label from Amsterdam to the New York Stock Exchange, betting that U.S. markets would assign a higher valuation to the company behind Taylor Swift, Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny.
The offer comes as Universal’s shares have lost nearly a third of their value since the company’s 2021 IPO, even as the global recorded-music market has continued to grow.
Ackman argues the problem lies less with the business than with the stock.
“UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business,” Ackman said Tuesday, “and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”
His offer would give Universal shareholders €9.4 billion (around $11 billion) cash plus 0.77 shares in a newly listed U.S. company for each share they own, implying a value of about €30.40 (around $35) a share, a 78% premium to where the stock closed last week.
The activist investor is proposing a complex transaction that would merge Universal with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, his acquisition vehicle. The plan also calls for a reworked balance sheet and a new board led by former Hollywood superagent and Disney president Michael Ovitz, while keeping Chief Executive Lucian Grainge in place.
Universal Music Group and Vivendi didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson from Pershing Square declined to comment beyond the firm’s public materials.
Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA on Getty Images
The shareholder battlefield
Any deal faces a formidable obstacle: Vincent Bolloré.
The 74-year-old French billionaire’s Bolloré Group owns 18.5% of Universal directly and has additional exposure through Vivendi, which holds 13.4%. Through those stakes, Bolloré commands a large majority of Universal’s voting rights, more than is required to approve the deal.
Ackman’s pursuit of Universal has been years in the making. In 2021, he announced plans to buy a 10% stake through a SPAC, but the effort ran into resistance from regulators and shareholders. He ultimately bought the stake through his hedge fund instead.
Related: Verizon raises price on key discounted offer for customers
Ackman joined Universal’s board in 2022 and stepped down in 2025. More recently, Universal delayed its long-planned U.S. listing because of market conditions, a setback that appeared to strengthen Ackman’s argument that a broader transaction might be the cleaner route.
Universal shares rose as much as 13% on Tuesday before paring gains to trade about 10% higher, still well below Pershing’s proposed valuation. Vivendi and Bolloré Group shares also moved higher.
A music giant at a crossroads
The offer comes at a turbulent moment for the music business.
Universal controls more than 30% of the global recorded-music market, alongside Sony Music and Warner Music Group.
Streaming helped rescue the industry from the piracy-era collapse of the 2000s, but growth has slowed, and labels face pressure from the platforms that distribute their music.
Artificial intelligence has added a new source of disruption.
AI-generated songs and deepfakes have intensified copyright disputes and raised new questions about how labels protect artists and monetize their catalogs.
If the transaction closes by year-end, as Pershing expects, the newly listed U.S. company would inherit a catalog stretching from the Beatles to Bad Bunny, as well as assets including the legendary recording studios – Abbey Road Studios – where The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Queen, Oasis, Radiohead, and Adele recorded their award-winning albums.
Related: Goldman Sachs resets Netflix stock price target for rest of 2026