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Now, let's take a look at some stocks on the move today in Europe. I'm Stephen Carroll and I'm joined by Bloomberg reporter Chloye Melee chloy Good morning. Let's start with a big move in Universal Music Groups shares, some m and a related news this morning. Yeah.
Absolutely, We've got Bill Ackman making an offer, major bid for Universal Music Group, which is the world's largest music label. Of course, so Bill Ackman's investment company, Pashing Square has proposed a combination with Universal, which would evalue it at a seventy eight percent premium to the last closing price. So quite a big deal, and it's quite a complex a deal structure as well. Universal would essentially merge with a blank check company set up by Akman and then
shift its listing from Abstem to New York. And so Persian Square already own about four point five percent of Universal, and he had already been pushing for a US listing, and it's said that a deal would kind of shake up the label and boost the share price that has been really weak lately. There's a few challenges, a few hurdles to this potential deal actually happening. The main one get in being getting the approval of some important shareholders.
So the two main ones to look out for are the Chinese company Tencent, but then particularly the French media billionaire Vason Bouleoret, who is who owns a really large part of that company, and some analysts are saying that unless Boloret supports the deal, it's going to be a dead end, and some are questioning whether he would actually accept those terms. So there's definitely going to be something that will be keeping an eye on as it goes through.
Yeah, and certainly, I mean such a massive player in the music industry as well of great interest. We were having a game earlier so we could guess how many universal music artists we actually knew, and it seems to be almost everyone that you can pick of is short. The shortlist of that turning next to ASML chloy a crackdown on chip tool sales being in focus for their investors.
Yeah, so SML is reacting this morning to some news that we've got essentially before the Easter weekend, which is their US lawmakers are proposing a crackdown on sales of
chip making tools to China. So the bill would basically strengthen existing restrictions on exports of equipment to China, including banning engineers from maintaining and repairing tools at some facilities in the country, and the bill is putting special emphasis on exports from allies, so including Japan and the Netherlands, and so it would directly concern asml Buebook Attentals is saying that the current controls have already cut demand and
that further restrictions may actually not have much of an additional impact. But then some analysts are saying otherwise. For example, City analysts saying that there might be some significant unintended consequences with those new export controls. So the market is still trying to figure out exactly what the impact might be. But in the meantime, SML shares are down quite a bit, and this really is going to be interested when they report their first quarter results next week.
Yes, indeed, and turning to the defense sector now, we're also watching Leonardo shares this week as we have an announcement on the way.
Yeah, Italy should be naming a replacement for Leonardo's CEO this week, so the decision is coming at an interesting time for Italy. So the government is finalizing appointments at some major state linked companies and it's coming at the same time as it suffered quite a big defeat in a referendum about reforming the justice system. So that defeat has prompted Georgia Maloney to implement changes in order to
sort of protect a sense of control and power. And so there will reports over the weekend that the Curren CEO of Leonardo was likely to be replaced. This is part of a broader move to changing boards at some state controlled companies and that really allows the government to reshape leadership at some of those really important firms. And the reaction from the market has been quite negative this morning about this this CEO change coming this week, and shares were definitely in the red f Leonardo.
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