Universal Music Group N.V.

Shareholders of Universal Music Group N.V.

Universal Music Group N.V. is listed on Euronext Amsterdam, so its complete shareholder base is not public. What is published is the statutory disclosure regime: under the Dutch Financial Supervision Act, holders must notify the AFM when their capital interest or voting rights cross 3%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 75% or 95%. The figures below are taken from the AFM register of substantial holdings and gross short positions, read on 24 September 2026, and are percentages of the 1,838,526,953 shares in issue notified to the AFM on 30 June 2026. Seven notifying parties currently stand at or above the 3% threshold; between them they account for roughly 52% of capital, with the balance held by investors below the disclosure threshold. Notifications are event-driven, so a stated percentage remains on the register until the holder next crosses a threshold and may differ from that holder’s actual position on any given day.

Two changes on the register are worth noting. First, in the notifications dated 21 and 22 September 2026, Vivendi SE, V. Bolloré and Tencent Holdings Limited each report voting rights equal to their own capital interest. Every earlier notification by those three parties, up to 21 May 2025, reported an aggregated voting percentage of between 39.90% and 43.38% arising from the voting arrangement in the relationship agreement entered into on 8 September 2021 by Vivendi SE, Concerto Investment B.V., Scherzo Investment B.V., Compagnie de l’Odet and Compagnie de Cornouaille. Concerto Partners LLC notified an aggregated voting position of 0.00% with a transaction date of 30 June 2025. Second, the Pershing Square position has gone: W.A. Ackman notified 0.01% with a transaction date of 3 June 2026, and on 4 June 2026 Universal Music Group N.V. announced that it had repurchased 14,156,285 of its own ordinary shares at EUR 17.66 per share, for approximately EUR 250 million, as part of the disposition of the entire position owned by various Pershing Square funds.

Superseded register entries that no longer reflect a threshold position include GIC Private Limited (4.70%, 23 May 2025), Bank of America Corporation (2.66%, 29 May 2025) and FMR LLC (2.96%, 4 April 2025).

Ultimate beneficial ownership

No natural person is disclosed as holding 25% or more of Universal Music Group N.V., the indicator threshold normally applied in the Netherlands. The largest interest notified by a natural person is that of V. Bolloré, who reported an indirect real capital interest and indirect voting rights of 18.41% on 21 September 2026, held through Compagnie de l’Odet, Bolloré SE and Vboll Invest SA. That is a disclosed indirect interest, not a beneficial-ownership determination: the Dutch UBO register maintained within the Handelsregister is not open to public inspection, so no UBO entry for this company could be reviewed, and no ultimate beneficial owner is reported here as verified.

Data availability

Major shareholders only. For a Dutch listed company the AFM register is the statutory disclosure source and it captures only holders who have crossed a notification threshold; there is no public share register and no complete shareholder list. Beneficial ownership information exists in the Dutch UBO register but is not publicly accessible. Nothing above should be read as evidence about holders below 3%.

Data-quality note on the shareholder rows stored against this profile: the row for Artisan Partners Funds Inc.-Artisan International Value Fund carries a percentage of 16.42%, which cannot be correct. Its own share count of 15,981,767 is 0.87% of the 1,838,526,953 shares in issue; 16.42% would be roughly 302 million shares. The stored percentages are shares-of-sample figures, not shares of the company, and the same applies to the other stored rows (Ameriflex Group, PNC Financial Services Group, Neiman Funds, Sustainable Growth Advisors). The stored rows also mix EUR and USD unit prices for a single euro-denominated Amsterdam-listed share class. None of them should be read as an ownership percentage; the AFM figures above are the correct basis. Separately, the group-level notification by Artisan Investments GP LLC (3.30%, 2 March 2026) is a different and much larger position than the single Artisan fund row stored here.

Sources

• AFM, Register of substantial holdings and gross short positions — Vivendi SE / Universal Music Group N.V., transaction date 22 September 2026: afm.nl. Register last updated 24 September 2026; retrieved 24 September 2026.
• AFM, Register of substantial holdings and gross short positions — V. Bolloré / Universal Music Group N.V., transaction date 21 September 2026: afm.nl. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• AFM, Register of substantial holdings and gross short positions — Tencent Holdings Limited / Universal Music Group N.V., transaction date 21 September 2026: afm.nl. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• AFM, Register of substantial holdings and gross short positions — BlackRock Inc. / Universal Music Group N.V., transaction date 18 September 2026: afm.nl. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• AFM, Register of substantial holdings and gross short positions, full register (all Universal Music Group N.V. notifications from 21 September 2021 to 22 September 2026): afm.nl. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• AFM, Register of issued capital — Universal Music Group N.V., transaction date 30 June 2026 (1,838,526,953 ordinary shares, ISIN NL0015000IY2): afm.nl. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• Universal Music Group N.V., Annual Report 2025 (authorised for issue 26 March 2026), Share capital, Relationship Agreement and Substantial shareholdings, pages 80–81: investors.universalmusic.com. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• Universal Music Group N.V., press release, Universal Music Group N.V. Announces Repurchase of 14.156 million of its Ordinary Shares from Pershing Square Funds, 4 June 2026: universalmusic.com. Retrieved 24 September 2026.

Directors and officers of Universal Music Group N.V.

Universal Music Group N.V. has a one-tier board, not a Dutch two-tier management board and supervisory board. Its 2025 annual report states that the Board consists of two Executive Directors, who are primarily responsible for day-to-day operations, and nine Non-Executive Directors, who supervise the Executive Directors and the company’s general course of affairs. Both categories are appointed by the General Meeting on the non-binding nomination of the Board, for a maximum term of two years at a time, with a twelve-year cap on a Non-Executive Director’s total time in office. Eleven directors were in office at the date the 2025 annual report was authorised for issue, 26 March 2026, and no director resignation or removal is recorded in that report. The company’s Corporate Executives, including the Chief Financial Officer, the Chief Operating Officer and the General Counsel, are senior management listed separately from the Board; holding a chief-officer title at Universal Music Group does not make a person a director of the Dutch company.

Executive Directors of Universal Music Group N.V.:

Non-Executive Directors of Universal Music Group N.V.:

Recent officer changes

• 13 May 2026 — the Annual General Meeting reappointed Vincent Vallejo as Executive Director and Nicole Avant, Margaret Frerejean-Taittinger, Mandy Ginsberg, Cathia Lawson-Hall, James Mitchell and Eric Sprunk as Non-Executive Directors. All resolutions on the agenda were adopted (company announcement of the 2026 Annual General Meeting results).
• 14 May 2025 — the Annual General Meeting reappointed Sherry Lansing, Haim Saban and Luc van Os as Non-Executive Directors, each entering a further term (2025 annual report, board composition table, page 62).
• 16 May 2024 — Eric Sprunk and Mandy Ginsberg were appointed as Non-Executive Directors for a first term (2025 annual report, board composition table, page 62).

Data availability

Partial, and sourced from filings rather than from the register. The Dutch Handelsregister publishes bestuurders with their commencement dates, but KVK’s free online search is a JavaScript application that returns no company data to a direct request and does not release an extract without payment, so no KVK extract for 81106661 could be retrieved for this profile. The appointment, reappointment and term-end dates above therefore come from the board composition table in the company’s audited 2025 annual report of 26 March 2026, updated with the published outcome of the 13 May 2026 Annual General Meeting. Nationality is stated explicitly for every board member in the annual report and is reported on that basis alone; the Dutch trade register does not publish nationality, and nothing here is inferred from a name, an address or a country of residence. Dates of birth are not published here. The Hilversum address is a corporate address and is not a residential or personal address of any director.

Data-quality note on the officer rows stored against this profile: they do not describe the Board of Directors. Of the five stored rows, only Sir Lucian Grainge and Vincent Vallejo are directors; Boyd Muir and Jeffrey Harleston are Corporate Executives and not members of the Board. Boyd Muir’s stored title, Executive VP, CFO and COO, is out of date — he was appointed Chief Operating Officer in October 2024, and Matt Ellis is the Chief Financial Officer. Jeffrey Harleston appears twice, as two separate records. The stored name for Vincent Vallejo is held as Vincu0117nt, a Unicode escape whose backslash has been stripped. No stored row carries an appointment or resignation date, and every row carries an address country of NL, which is the company’s country of registration and says nothing about the individual. The stored set also reports 12 officers in total while only five rows are held.

Sources

• Universal Music Group N.V., Annual Report 2025 (authorised for issue 26 March 2026), Corporate governance — Board composition, appointment and appointment term, pages 61–62, and Biographies of the Board of Directors, pages 286–289: investors.universalmusic.com. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• Universal Music Group N.V., Universal Music Group N.V. Announces Results of its 2026 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, 13 May 2026: prnewswire.com. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• Universal Music Group N.V., Board and Governance (Articles of Association, Board Regulations, Retirement Schedule for Non-Executive Directors): investors.universalmusic.com. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• Netherlands Chamber of Commerce (KVK), trade register entry for company number 81106661: kvk.nl. Retrieval attempted 24 September 2026; no extract returned to an automated request.

Group structure of Universal Music Group N.V.

Universal Music Group N.V. is the top entity of a large international group. Its 2025 consolidated financial statements comprise the assets and liabilities of 435 legal entities, and Note 27 states that all the entities listed there are 100% owned. Neither the annual report nor the AFM register identifies an immediate or ultimate parent of Universal Music Group N.V.: the largest capital interest notified to the AFM is 18.41%, and no party has notified a holding at or above the 20% threshold. The company’s own financial statements record exactly two direct subsidiaries, each held at a 100% voting interest — Universal International Music B.V. in Hilversum, the Netherlands, and Universal Music Group, Inc. in Santa Monica, United States — carried at EUR 21,080 million and EUR 14,850 million respectively at 31 December 2025. The rest of the structure, including the labels and publishing companies in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Australia, sits beneath those two holdings. Relationships below are stated as at 31 December 2025 unless otherwise noted.

Verified corporate relationships

Recent structural changes

• 20 February 2026 — acquisition completed. Universal Music Group acquired all of the issued and outstanding share capital of Downtown Music Holdings LLC, a global music services business covering artist and label services, distribution, royalties and financial services, and music publishing, obtaining control from that date. Consideration was USD 730 million (EUR 621 million) in cash to the selling shareholder, with a further USD 168 million (EUR 143 million) applied to settle Downtown’s third-party bank loans. The European Commission had approved the transaction on 13 February 2026 conditional on the full divestment of Downtown’s royalty accounting platform Curve Royalty Systems, Ltd.
• 26 February 2021 — the reorganisation that created the present structure. Universal Music Group N.V. obtained all of the shares of Universal International Music B.V. and Universal Music Group, Inc. by issuing new shares. This common-control reorganisation placed both direct holdings under the Dutch company ahead of its Euronext Amsterdam listing on 21 September 2021.

Data availability

Partial. The group’s own audited filings give the number of consolidated entities, the two direct subsidiaries with their voting percentages, and named Dutch and German subsidiaries with their local registration numbers, but they do not publish a full entity list or an ownership percentage for each of the 435 companies. The Dutch Handelsregister discloses participations only in a paid extract, and KVK’s free search returned no data to an automated request, so no register-side confirmation of the Dutch subsidiary links was obtained for this profile; the Dutch relationships above rest on the section 403 declarations in the company’s own 2025 financial statements, which name each subsidiary with its KVK number. Absence of a disclosed parent is not evidence that none exists.

Data-quality note on the corporate-structure tree stored against this profile: it holds 273 nodes and is correctly rooted at Universal Music Group N.V., with Universal International Music B.V. (KVK 31018439) and Universal Music Group, Inc. immediately beneath it, which matches the annual report. However, no node carries a relationship type or an ownership percentage, so the tree records adjacency only. Several entity names contain broken Unicode escapes where a backslash has been stripped, such as beschru00e4nkter for beschränkter and Zenemukiadu00f3 for Zeneműkiadó. The tree also places EDITIONS SALABERT SA FRANCE, Universal Music Oy (Finland) and Universal Music Group, Inc. as siblings at the top level rather than reflecting the two-holding structure the financial statements describe, and it still contains two Russian entities whose current status is not evidenced by any source reviewed here.

Sources

• Universal Music Group N.V., Annual Report 2025 (authorised for issue 26 March 2026): Note 27 List of consolidated entities (page 245); Note 29 Audit exemptions, the Dutch section 403 and German section 264(3) subsidiary lists with registration numbers (pages 245–246 and 261–262); Note 30 Subsequent events (page 247); and Company Note 7 Investments in subsidiaries (page 258): investors.universalmusic.com. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• Universal Music Group N.V., Annual Report 2025, Company Note 1 General information (page 253) — incorporation on 4 December 2020, the 26 February 2021 reorganisation and the 21 September 2021 Euronext Amsterdam listing. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
• AFM, Register of substantial holdings and gross short positions — Universal Music Group N.V. notifications, showing no holder at or above 20%: afm.nl. Register last updated 24 September 2026; retrieved 24 September 2026.
• Netherlands Chamber of Commerce (KVK), trade register: kvk.nl. Retrieval attempted 24 September 2026; no extract returned to an automated request.