Ackman - Pershing - UMG

April 2026

Normally, you can’t give people something you don’t have. Or confidently promise something you don’t control.

But Pershing Square and Bill Ackman seem to think differently. And the media are happy to buy the story, competing to use the highest valuation figure in their headlines. WSJ says $60bn, MusicAlly reports $ 63.5bn, MBW goes with $64bn.

While these figures are coming from the official non-binding offer, the offer itself is not what it tries to look like. There are at least two major issues that are hard to overlook:

• Of €9.5bn total, roughly €7.0bn would come from UMG itself via a share buy back. UMG does not even need Pershing to execute this part of the deal. The remaining €2.5bn would not result in “Pershing buying UMG”. Its existing stake will increase from 4.6% to only 11.7%
• The offered price is not $64bn. It is also not $60bn. It is closer to $47bn or €22 per share. All other higher numbers presented in the offer are wishful thinking and financial engineering to mislead the crowd. But without engineering, it is much more difficult to present the deal as attractive, especially when the price is lower than where the shares traded just three months ago.

It is difficult to blame people for using wrong numbers. The structure is deliberately misleading. It is as if I came to you and offered 1,000 Mexican pesos for a car worth 500 euros. “1,000” sounds impressive, twice as much as 500. But once you check the exchange rate, you realise it’s only about €50. But wait, I said it was a good deal. Don’t worry - the exchange rate will increase tenfold by the time the deal closes, so you’ll still get your €500.

Another problem is the proposed governance structure. For a stake of this size, Pershing is seeking disproportionately large board representation and changes to the management agreement. It’s hard to imagine Vincent Bolloré giving up that level of control.

All factors combined make me feel that it is not a serious offer, but rather an attempt to push the share price up and maybe attract another real buyer who will buy UMG alongside Pershing’s 4.6% stake at the desired price.

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