William Ackman’s Pershing Square is closing a deal with Universal Music Group, according to the Wall Street Journal. The deal values Universal Music as much as $40 billion.
The deal between blank-cheque Pershing Square and Universal Music is set to be concluded in a few weeks although talks may collapse.
Ackman’s entities will have a 10% stake in Universal Music with about 33 billion euros or $40 billion equity and 35 billion euros enterprise value.
Pershing Square will pay approximately $4 billion under the deal.
Universal, which had revenues of about 7.4 billion euros last year, has benefited from the demand for music streaming.
Ackman has been targeting a company to get public through a SPAC deal that kept analysts guessing his targets.
When completed, the deal would be a record SPAC transaction and is above $35 billion entered by ride-hailing Grab Holdings Inc.
Pershing Square stock is currently declining. PSTH: NYSE is down 6.59% on premarket.
