iWorld
Can Reed Hastings Netflix the skiing business?
Ted Sarandos and he totally and irreversibly changed how video is consumed with their streaming service Netflix. Forever. Now Reed Hastings is putting his best forward into the skiing business in the US, according to a feature in The New York Times.
The 63 year old billionaire plonked an undisclosed sum to buy a controlling interest in Powder Mountain a skiing area in the north east patch of Utah. The mountain receives close to 360 inches of snow each winter season which makes It a snow lovers delight. Summit, the owners of the mountain – one of the few private ones in the US (most of the rest are leased from the US Forest Service or are on a mix of private and publicy owned land) – had struggled to make a profit despite grandiose plans. Hastings a -an avid skier and snowboarder – jumped at the chance and put down $100 million of his own money and bought the 8,646 acre skiing property in September 2023. He followed that up by acquiring another 2,400 acres adjacent to the skiing area in March 2024.
Hastings plans to spruce up PowMow (as Powder Mountain is locally called) by installing four chair lifts, building two day lodges with restaurants, private rentals, retail stores and a 40,000 square foot lodge with a state of the art spa.
2,000 acres of this would be made private, he announced. An enclave at the top would host homes which would be sold at upwards of $2 million each. These would also carry an annual membership fee of between $30,000 and 100,000, which would give homeowners exclusive access to the private skiing area, apart from the 2,400 acres he acquired recently.
The rest of the mountain which would be left open to the public, will cost skiers $1,399 for a season pass (as against $1,259 previously), seniors above 75 years $1,049 (as against free). Additionally, there would be no limit on the membership numbers as has been the practice so far. The public area is slated to be opened in 2025.
Hastings told The New York Times that his move into the skiing business is not a CSR activity.
“I’m investing a lot of my money in Powder Mountain but my plan was never to subsidise it,: he said. “…I never saw this as a charitable endeavor. We are building a luxury experience on the private side of the mountain…We decided we needed to lure people here by offering a private experience they can’t get anyplace else..”
And no one knows better than him about providing experiences, especially if you consider how he transformed a movie rental business into one of the most valuable media and entertainment business globally.
iWorld
Bill Ackman makes a $64bn bid for Universal Music Group
The hedge fund boss wants to list the world’s biggest record label in New York and thinks he knows exactly what ails it
NEW YORK: Bill Ackman wants to buy the world’s biggest record label. Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by the billionaire investor, submitted a non-binding proposal on Tuesday to acquire all outstanding shares of Universal Music Group in a business combination transaction worth roughly $64.4 billion (around 55.8 billion euros).
Under the terms of the offer, UMG shareholders would receive 9.4 billion euros in cash, equivalent to 5.05 euros per share, plus 0.77 shares of a newly created company, dubbed New UMG, for each share held. Pershing Square values the total package at 30.40 euros per share, a 78 per cent premium to UMG’s closing price on April 2.
The deal would see UMG merge with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, with the combined entity incorporating as a Nevada corporation and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. New UMG would publish financial statements under US GAAP and become eligible for S&P 500 index inclusion. Pershing Square says the transaction is expected to close by year-end, with all equity financing backstopped by Ackman’s firm and its affiliates, and all debt financing committed at signing. The transaction would cancel 17 per cent of UMG’s outstanding shares, leaving New UMG with 1.541 billion shares outstanding.
Ackman has a long history with UMG. Pershing Square first bought approximately 10 per cent of the company from Vivendi in the summer of 2021 for around $4 billion, around the time of UMG’s listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. He has since trimmed that position, raising around $1.4 billion from the sale of a 2.7 per cent stake in March 2025, and resigned from UMG’s board in May 2025, citing new executive and board obligations arising from recent investments.
His diagnosis of UMG’s troubles is blunt. The company’s stock has fallen around 33 per cent over the past twelve months on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, and Ackman lays out six reasons why. These include uncertainty around the Bolloré Group’s 18 per cent stake in the company, the postponement of UMG’s US listing, the underutilisation of UMG’s balance sheet, the absence of a publicly disclosed capital allocation plan and earnings algorithm, a failure to reflect UMG’s 2.7 billion euro stake in Spotify in its valuation, and what Ackman calls suboptimal shareholder investor relations, communications and engagement.
The Bolloré stake has long cast a shadow over the company. Cyrille Bolloré stepped down from UMG’s board in July 2025 as the Bolloré Group battled the French financial markets regulator over its stake in Vivendi, which holds a further capital interest in UMG. UMG had confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2025 for a proposed secondary listing in America, but put those plans on hold in March 2026, citing market conditions.
Ackman has kind words for UMG’s management, at least. “Since UMG’s listing, Lucian Grainge and the company’s management have done an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance,” he said. But he made his diagnosis plain: “UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”
In other words, Ackman believes UMG is a great business trapped inside a broken structure. If the board agrees, he intends to fix that, loudly and in New York.
