Universal Music Group (UMG) said on Thursday (June 4) it repurchased 14.1 million of shares of its stock following moves by Bill Ackman‘s Pershing Square to offload the investment firm’s entire 80-million share stake in UMG after the record company’s board rejected Pershing’s offer to take over the company.
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UMG acquired the ordinary shares at a price of 17.66 euros ($20.48) per share, according to a release from the company, for a total consideration of 250 million euros ($290.9 million). UMG’s share price was 18.36 euros ($21.32) on Thursday morning New York time, up from an earlier trading-day low of 17.99 euros following yesterday’s news of Pershing’s sell off. UMG’s share price has fallen 6.5% over the past five trading days since its board rejected Ackman’s bid.
The share repurchases put something of a bow on the end of UMG’s five-year relationship with Pershing Square and Ackman, who spent three years on the company’s board and who once described his feelings about the company as “love at first sight.”
UMG has been buying back shares as part of an effort to address its under-performing share price. The board granted permission to buy back up to 1 billion euros, of which UMG had, as of May 29, repurchased €147,128,995. UMG said the 250 million euro share repurchase announced Thursday does not come out of the initial planned 500 million euro buyback program but is pursuant to the additional 500 million euros worth of repurchases that were authorized in May.
Ackman had submitted a non-binding bid to merge UMG with a Pershing vehicle and move its primary stock listing to the U.S. on April 7 in a deal that valued the company at 55.55 billion euros ($64 billion). On May 27, Bolloré Group CEO Cyrille Bolloré urged the company not to accept Ackman’s bid, saying during a meeting of Bolloré’s shareholders that, “We think the price is not there at all.” As of Dec. 31, 2025, Bolloré Group owns 18.4% of UMG shares, representing nearly 40% of shareholder voting rights, and the family overall owns around 28% of UMG stock.
Without Bolloré’s support, UMG said its board rejected the merger offer on May 29, with a press release saying that Pershing’s offer “fundamentally and materially undervalues UMG and will not deliver superior value creation.”
If accepted, the offer would have moved UMG’s primary stock listing from Euronext Amsterdam to a U.S.-based exchange. Ackman had been pushing for the company to move to the U.S. stock market since 2024.
