Bill Ackman, Founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
Bill Ackman’s billion dollar investor Pershing Square Tontine Holdings (PSTH) blank check firm confirmed Friday that it is in talks to buy 10% of Universal Music Group for approximately $ 4 billion.
The deal valued Universal Music at € 35 billion (around $ 42.4 billion), PSTH said in a statement.
According to PTSH, the deal will not result in a merger and Universal Music will conduct a scheduled listing on Euronext Amsterdam in the third quarter of 2021.
The French media company Vivendi is the majority owner of Universal Music. The Chinese technology company Tencent is a minority shareholder.
Vivendi shares in Paris gained around 0.48% in early trading.
CNBC had previously reported that PSTH is closing a deal to bring Universal Music Group public.
PSTH shares fell more than 8% in expanded trading after closing at $ 25.05 on Thursday. The SPAC IPO was offered at $ 20 per share and began trading in September 2020.
Blank check companies are usually set up to raise funds to fund a merger or acquisition through an IPO, usually within two years.
The SPAC merger of Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab with Altimeter Growth Corp. is the largest SPAC merger announced to date. Grab is valued at more than $ 30 billion, according to SPAC Research.
The SPAC market encountered an obstacle on the regulatory front when the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a change in accounting rules that would class SPAC warrants as liabilities rather than equity instruments. SPAC issuance slowed drastically after a record quarter in the first quarter.
In 2021, 151 SPAC IPOs had already completed, raising $ 47.6 billion, according to data from SPAC Research. According to SPAC Research, there are 289 deals that are actively looking for goals.
The proprietary CNBC SPAC 50 index, which tracks the 50 largest pre-merger US blank check deals by market capitalization, wiped its gains in 2021 due to tightened regulatory scrutiny, trading around 4% lower year-over-year.
– CNBC’s Yun Li and Yen Nee Lee contributed to this report.