Universal Music Group (UMG), the largest music corporation in the world, which owns many of the top record labels and production companies, has been presented with a buyout proposal by US investment firm Pershing Square worth an estimated $64.3 billion (£48 billion or €55 billion).
UMG is a Dutch-American conglomerate, headquartered in the Netherlands and the US, estimated to hold between 31% and 34% of the global market share. Considered the largest of the “Big Three” of the world’s record labels alongside Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group, UMG’s list of subsidiaries includes EMI, Abbey Road Studios, Def Jam Recordings and Motown.
The company’s list of artists puts things in a greater perspective – their full roster boasts Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar, Coldplay, The Weeknd and Bad Bunny to name just a few. In their financial report for the year, the group declared that their artists had occupied 9 of the top 10 spots on the year’s IFPI Global Artist Chart for the third consecutive year, as well as 4 of the top 5 artists on Spotify. Universal further reported continued revenue growth throughout 2025, including greater subscription service rates and major successes with Swift, Olivia Dean, Morgan Waller, Stray Kids and the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack.
But this sustained growth is not enough for Bill Ackman, chief executive of Pershing Square, which currently owns a 10% stake in UMG. The US-based investment group also holds shares in Google, Meta and Amazon, and it now seeks to take a majority hold over Universal in order to boost its stock price and profit margins. Pershing Square’s bid of $64 billion aims to fix the “languished” stock prices of UMG, with its problems Ackman identifies as being outside of its music business capable of being “addressed with this transaction”.
According to the BBC, in a letter to the board of UMG Ackman voiced that the company had “dramatically underperformed” in US and world stock indexes, due to various factors but chief among them is his belief that the company is currently only listed in European markets from Amsterdam, and not US ones such as the New York Stock Exchange. A move to list itself on the American stock market was filed in 2025 as per the BBC, with a valuation at the time of approximately $50bn, but this has been delayed since March this year citing “turbulent market conditions” according to Music Business Worldwide.
Further issues hampering UMG’s profitability include the dilemmas around royalty payment from streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, who are known to provide little compensation for music consumption, and the rise of AI-generated music and piracy. The group threatened to pull the rights to their library from social media platform TikTok in 2024, due to issues over royalty payment and concerns about “protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI, and online safety for TikTok’s users.”
As of today, Universal has not responded to the offer. The BBC reports that since the proposal was made publicly known, UMG’s share price rose by nearly 30% before plateauing at around 10% higher.
