Billionaire claims world’s biggest music company has suffered due to postponement of US listing Business live – latest updates Billionaire Bill Ackman’s hedge fund has offered to buy Universal Music Group (UMG) in a deal that values the world’s biggest music company at more than €50bn (£44bn). Pershing Square, the New-York based hedge fund, has offered to buy the business, which is home to artists...
Billionaire claims world’s biggest music company has suffered due to postponement of US listing Business live – latest updates Billionaire Bill Ackman’s hedge fund has offered to buy Universal Music Group (UMG) in a deal that values the world’s biggest music company at more than €50bn (£44bn). Pershing Square, the New-York based hedge fund, has offered to buy the business, which is home to artists including Taylor Swift and Elton John, in a cash and stock deal. Continue reading...
tadamichi/iStock via Getty Images Liquidity has moved to the center of investing conversations in recent months. Corporate direct lending, a subset of private credit, has drawn scrutiny as investment vehicles often promise monthly or quarterly liquidity while owning assets that are, in practice, difficult to exit. Headlines about redemption limits in private credit funds underscore that this is no...
tadamichi/iStock via Getty Images Liquidity has moved to the center of investing conversations in recent months. Corporate direct lending, a subset of private credit, has drawn scrutiny as investment vehicles often promise monthly or quarterly liquidity while owning assets that are, in practice, difficult to exit. Headlines about redemption limits in private credit funds underscore that this is no longer a theoretical risk. Against that backdrop, there has been a persistent and parallel debate about liquidity in public credit markets, where corporate bonds are bought and sold. Critics – often managers touting private credit – have argued that primary dealer banks hold fewer corporate bonds than they once did and that trading is concentrated within a subset of newer bonds. Supporters counter that advances in trading technology and market structure continue to improve liquidity. The data strongly support the latter view. Across multiple, complementary measures of depth, breadth, and transaction costs, public corporate bond markets appear healthier today than at any point since the global financial crisis (GFC). Using the right yardsticks There is no single definition of market liquidity, but it is commonly understood as the ability to buy or sell an asset quickly, in size, and at prices reflecting fundamental values. There are three main components: Depth: Can the market absorb trades without large price moves? Breadth: Is trading activity dispersed across securities? Transaction costs : What is the price of immediate execution? We can quantify these components using transaction-level data from the TRACE database 1 . First, to capture depth, we use the Amihud illiquidity measure 2 . In plain English, it shows the average price change associated with one dollar of trading volume. While this fluctuates with volatility, it has remained well-behaved – across investment grade (IG) and high yield (HY) markets alike – and is near the low end of its historical range (see Figu...