Vivendi shareholders adopted Monday at an extraordinary general meeting a resolution to authorize the distribution by a dividend in kind of 60% of the capital of the musical nugget Universal Music Group (UMG) by the end of the year .
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The project, announced in mid-February and which must be followed by a listing of UMG on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (Netherlands), collected 99.98% of the votes, with a “
record quorum
” of 73.33 %, welcomed the chairman of the supervisory board Yannick Bolloré at the general meeting.
It marks "
an important step in the history (of the) group
", underlined the president of the management board Arnaud de Puyfontaine.
“
When we arrived at the head of Vivendi (in 2014, editor's note), the music industry was at its lowest and even threatened with extinction.
Many were advising us to sell Universal Music Group,
”he said.
UMG's turnover (7.4 billion euros in 2020) has since benefited greatly from the growth of music platforms and
subscription
streaming
.
From now on, Vivendi shareholders will be able "to
choose for themselves whether they prefer to wait for further new value creation or to reap the fruits of this growth carried out in recent years,
" he added.
Vivendi, 27% controlled by the Bolloré Group, has already sold 20% of the capital of its subsidiary to an international consortium led by the Chinese digital champion Tencent, on the basis of a valuation of the entire group up to 30 billion euros.
The media giant Vivendi, owner in particular of the Canal + group, the Havas communication group and the publisher Editis, presents the operation as a way to better promote its activities and to be able to accelerate its development in content, media and advertising. communication.
UMG, based in Santa Monica (California) with a catalog ranging from the Beatles to Rihanna, is one of the “
majors
” dominating the world music market, with the Japanese Sony and the American Warner.