Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Bids $64 Billion to Acquire Universal Music Group

Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management submitted a non-binding proposal to acquire Universal Music Group in a cash-and-stock deal valued at approximately $64 billion, offering shareholders a 78% premium over UMG's last closing price and a path to move the world's largest music label from Amsterdam to the New York Stock Exchange.

The offer, submitted Tuesday, values UMG at €30.4 per share compared to its most recent close of €17.1. Under the proposed terms, shareholders would receive €5.05 per share in cash, totaling €9.4 billion ($10.8 billion), plus 0.77 shares of the new combined company for each UMG share held. The transaction would be executed through a merger with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, Ltd., an SEC-registered acquisition company, with the resulting entity listing on the NYSE under U.S. GAAP standards and becoming immediately eligible for S&P 500 inclusion. Pershing Square would backstop all equity financing, with debt financing committed at signing.

The target is formidable. Universal Music holds approximately 33.9% of the global recorded music market, nearly double Sony Music's roughly 21% share. Its 2025 full-year revenue reached approximately €12.5 billion ($14.4 billion), up 5.7% year-over-year, with Q4 alone generating €3.6 billion. UMG's roster spans Taylor Swift, Drake, Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, and Coldplay, and its artists occupied nine of the Top 10 spots on the IFPI Global Artist Chart for the third consecutive year in 2025.

Ackman's bid is explicitly a critique of the stock, not the business. "Since UMG's listing, Sir Lucian Grainge and the company's management have done an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance," he said, adding that "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."

Pershing Square identified four specific headwinds suppressing UMG's valuation since its September 2021 Euronext Amsterdam debut: uncertainty surrounding the Bolloré Group's 18% stake, the postponement of a planned U.S. listing, an underutilized balance sheet, and the absence of a disclosed capital allocation plan. Ackman also flagged what he views as a market failure to recognize UMG's €2.7 billion stake in Spotify. The Bolloré overhang became acute in summer 2025, when Cyrille Bolloré, son of French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, resigned from UMG's board and shares dropped sharply on fears of a block sale.

The bid marks the culmination of a five-year pursuit. In 2021, Ackman famously described UMG as "love at first sight," saying it "checked every box," but his first acquisition attempt through SPAC vehicle Pershing Square Tontine Holdings was blocked by the SEC. Vivendi, UMG's French parent, instead sold Pershing a 7.1% stake for $2.8 billion based on a €35 billion enterprise value; Ackman then exercised an option for an additional 2.9% for $1.15 billion, bringing Pershing's total outlay to more than $4 billion.

Since then, the position has been actively reshaped. In January 2025, Pershing distributed approximately 47 million UMG shares to limited partners in its PSVII co-investment funds rather than cash. Two months later, it sold roughly 50 million shares at €26.60 each via a Morgan Stanley block trade, raising more than €1.3 billion. After that sale, Pershing still held approximately 140 million UMG shares, about 7.6% of the company and 17% of Pershing's total capital. The stock's subsequent slide to €17.1 has made Ackman's offer, and his argument that the market has persistently mispriced UMG, all the more pointed.