Universal Music, home to Taylor Swift and Drake, receives €55bn takeover offer

Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square claims world’s biggest music company has suffered because of delay of US listing Billionaire Bill Ackman’s hedge fund has offered to buy Universal Music Group (UMG) in a deal that values the world’s biggest music company at about €55bn (£48bn). Pershing Square, the New-York based hedge fund, has made a bid for the business, which is home to artists including Taylor Swift and Elton John, with a cash and stock deal that would move its stock market listing from Amsterdam to New York. Ackman said in a statement that while the company, which is led by the British-born Sir Lucian Grainge, had done “an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance”, its share price had lagged owing to issues “unrelated to the performance of its music business”. Shares in UMG, which have been listed in Amsterdam since 2021, had lost more than a quarter of their value in the past year alone. Pershing’s offer triggered a sharp rise, with the price up by 13% on the previous trading day when the Amsterdam Euronext exchange closed on Tuesday. The company is one of the “big three” recor