iWorld
‘Radhe’ rush: Zee5 rolls out new Rs 499 plan to reel in viewers
KOLKATA: OTT platform Zee5, along with ZeePlex, has rolled out a special Radhe Combo Offer to make Salman Khan’s upcoming Eid release, Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai, accessible to the masses. The special one-year offer, available at an attractive price of Rs 499 will give viewers the opportunity to watch the much-awaited film on Zee5 with ZeePlex starting 13 May, in addition to giving audience access to the streaming service’s extensive and diverse premium content library.
The Rs 499 ‘Radhe Combo Offer’ will allow consumers to watch Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai on Zee5 with ZeePlex, along with access to Zee5 originals, movies, TV shows, live TV, ALTBalaji shows, ad-free catch-up TV, Zindagi TV shows, kids content, and much more for one year. This subscription plan will also give consumers access to the new 50+ theatricals across diverse languages and 40+ originals slated for the year.
Zee5 India chief business officer Manish Kalra said, “Salman Khan’s films are thorough family entertainers which appeal to audiences across demographics. Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai is one of the biggest releases of the year and we are proud to launch this on Zee5 in a multi-format model. A Salman Khan film with its mass appeal becomes the perfect choice to launch our specially designed annual value proposition of Rs 499, to unify India and Bharat through our shared love for films.
He went on to describe the Rs 499 plan as the most attractive value proposition for a user, and that it will also help the OTT platform cast a wider net into the country by tapping into newer audience segments.
The first ever multi-platform release of its kind, Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai will be available on Zee5 with ZeePlex, theatres worldwide keeping the Covid protocols in mind, and across all leading DTH operators – Dish, D2H, Tata Sky and Airtel Digital TV. The film’s trailer has already amassed 65 million+ views across all platforms and the recently released song, Seeti Maar, is topping charts, having accumulated 49 million+ views and counting.
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.
