Bill Ackman’s fund wants to buy Universal Music | CNN Business

Pershing Square Capital Management, founded by billionaire Bill Ackman, has offered to buy Universal Music Group, the record company behind Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar and Sabrina Carpenter among other artists. The proposal was submitted alongside a “value creation plan,” the fund, where Ackman is also the CEO, said in a press release Tuesday. The complex transaction is expected to close by the end of the year, it added. Universal Music’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,” Ackman said in the release. Under the proposal, Universal Music – the world’s largest record company – will merge with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, a so-called special purpose acquisition rights company, which is similar to a conventional special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, but does not require investors to commit capital until a deal is identified. The resulting company will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, moving Universal Music’s listing from Europe to the United States. Ackman tried a similar maneuver before. In 2021, h