Universal Music receives takeover offer from Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square
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 more than €50bn (£44bn).Pershing Square, the New-York based hedge fund, has offered to buy the business, which is home to artists including Taylor Swift and Elton John, in a cash and stock deal.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, have lost more than a quarter of their value in the past year alone.The company is one of the “big three” record labels, alongside Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.
Its roster ranges from classical musicians to stars such as Adele, Drake and Ariana Grande.Ackman blamed its poor share price performance partly on the delay of UMG’s listing in the US, underutilisation of its balance sheet and uncertainty around the French conglomerate Bolloré Group’s 18% stake in the company.He also cited a “lack of investor credit” in the company’s valuation of its €2.7bn stake in the music streaming service, Spotify.Pershing Square, which Ackman set up in 2004, controls more than $26bn in assets.
The fund bought a 10% stake in UMG in 2021.While Ackman said Grainge and his management team had done an “excellent job” at the company, as part of the proposed deal the hedge fund would add Michael Ovitz, a veteran talent agent, as chair, as well as two representatives from Pershing Square to the company’s board.The deal would also be subject to a “new employment contract and compensation arrangement for Sir Lucian Grainge”, Ackman said in a letter to the board of directors at UMG.Grainge was paid a package of more than €41m last year.That included a €4.
4m base salary and more than €30m in bonuses.Under the proposed deal, UMG would merge with a blank-cheque company set up by Pershing Square, and then list on the New York Stock Exchange.Shareholders would receive a total of €9.4bn in cash and 0.77 shares in the new company for every Universal share they own.
Together, that would represent a 78% premium compared with the company’s closing share price on Thursday, Pershing said.UMG was approached for comment.
Court dismisses former WhatsApp security chief’s lawsuit against Meta
A US court has dismissed a lawsuit from WhatsApp’s former security chief, who alleged that parent company Meta ignored internal flaws he flagged about the messaging app’s digital defenses.Abdullah Baig, who claims he was fired in retaliation for raising these concerns, had alleged that billions of users had been put at risk because of these vulnerabilities. Thousands of employees could view sensitive user data, including profile photos and location, Baig claimed in the lawsuit filed in September. A judge ruled he had not presented enough evidence to move forward.The US district court in northern California ruled last month to dismiss Baig’s claims, with the judge, Laurel Beeler, writing on 19 March that “the complaint does not contain sufficient facts to show that the plaintiff reported violations of SEC rules or regulations
Goodbye mrbrightside416: Google allows users to alter quirky Gmail addresses
Did your McLovin!1976!@gmail.com email address seem funny at the time but less so now you are applying for dozens of jobs?Google has said it is giving US users a chance to appear more professional by letting them change their Google account username – whatever appears before @gmail.com in an email address – without losing access to their account.However, the tech company will limit the name changes to one per 12 months. In an example shared online by Google, the email address sk8tergrl123
Pupils in England are losing their thinking skills because of AI, survey suggests
Pupils using artificial intelligence are losing their capacity for critical thinking, according to a survey of secondary school teachers in England.Two-thirds said they had observed the decline among children who they also said no longer felt the need to spell because of voice-to-text technology.“Students are losing core skills – thinking, creativity, writing, even how to have a conversation,” one teacher told the National Education Union poll.“AI is destroying what ‘learning’ – problem-solving, critical thinking and collaborative effort – is,” said another. A third anonymous contributor added: “Children no longer feel the need to spell as voice-to-text replaces knowledge
Claude’s code: Anthropic leaks source code for AI software engineering tool
Anthropic accidentally released part of the internal source code for its AI-powered coding assistant, Claude Code, due to “human error”, the company said on Tuesday.An internal-use file mistakenly included in a software update pointed to an archive containing nearly 2,000 files and 500,000 lines of code, which were quickly copied to developer platform GitHub. A post on X sharing a link to the leaked code had more than 29m views early on Wednesday, and a rewritten version of the source code quickly became GitHub’s fastest-ever downloaded repository. Anthropic issued copyright takedown requests to try to contain the code’s spread. Within the code, users spotted blueprints for a Tamagotchi-esque coding assistant and an always-on AI agent, per the Verge
SpaceX confidentially files to go public at $1.75tn, reports say
SpaceX has confidentially filed for an initial public offering on the US stock market, according to reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. The IPO is set to be one of the most closely watched and highly valued listings in market history.Elon Musk’s company, which has become a dominant power in both space travel and satellite communications, could potentially seek a valuation upwards of $1.75tn. The confidential filing will give regulators a period to review and discuss the company’s financial disclosures before investors and the public are able to view them
‘System malfunction’ causes robotaxis to stall in the middle of the road in China
A “system malfunction” has caused several self-driving robotaxis to stall in the middle of the road in China, police have confirmed, after distressed riders were stranded for hours.Local authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan said they began receiving calls “one after another” on Tuesday night from riders reporting that autonomous vehicles operated by the Chinese internet company Baidu had frozen.“Multiple Apollo Go cars stopped in the middle of the road, unable to move,” police said in a statement on Wednesday, referring to Baidu’s driverless taxi service. “After investigation, preliminary findings suggest the cause was system malfunction.”Baidu has a fleet of more than 500 driverless cars in Wuhan
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