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Vivendi investor promotes Universal sell off plan, management board not impressed
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 24 March 2015
You’re not in the cool crowd as a major record company owner if you’ve not got at least one shareholder wanting your music business spun off or sold. So well done Vivendi, which has had to reject a proposal from P Schoenfeld Asset Management that it flog off the Universal Music Group.
The suggestion was seemingly first made by the asset management fund back in December, and has been refloated again this week. According to the Financial Times, the proposal to sell off UMG sits alongside a number of grievances expressed by PSAM – which controls just under 1% of Vivendi stock – mainly relating to dividend payments, uncertainty about future plans, and the impact those things are possibly having on share price.
Oh, and Team PSAM don’t seem to like the influence bigger shareholder and now Vivendi Chairman Vincent Bolloré has over the French entertainment group these days. On a possible Universal sell off, the investor group said: “Strategic acquirers paying a control premium for either UMG, Canal+ or both could be a source of additional upside”.
But Vivendi insists that, with plans to grow the firm’s interests in media and entertainment, current key assets Universal and Canal+ are very much part of the company’s future. “The management board opposes the dismantling of Vivendi”, said, well, the management board of Vivendi.
As previously reported, Vivendi has been doing a lot of denying of any plans to sell Universal of late following reports that US-based Liberty Media had expressed an interest in buying the music company. I’ve counted seven denials so far. Corporate conventions dictate that once there have been eleven denials, a sale quickly follows.
