Flock together

Markets: Oil prices fell sharply after the U.S. and Iran announced a two-week ceasefire. Markets in Asia surged and stock futures rose on the news.

One of the most memed men in high finance could upend the music business.

What happened: Pershing Square Capital — the hedge fund owned by controversial investor Bill “Billionaire Activist Man” Ackman — has offered to acquire Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record company. The deal would see Universal merge with a special purpose acquisition company valued at around US$64 billion. 

Catch-up: Pershing Square is a top shareholder in Universal, acquiring its stake just before the company went public in Amsterdam in 2021. Ackman was bullish, comparing music to food and water in terms of necessity, even adding “you can’t license IP from food and water.”

Why it’s happening: Universal shares have lost more than a third of their value since the company went public. Purported reasons for the dip include AI disruption and fears about the future of streaming, but Ackman believes that listing the company in New York would cure what ails Universal by unlocking more deep-pocketed U.S. investors and bolstering liquidity.

Why it matters: Universal is home to the biggest names in music, from Taylor Swift to The Beatles, and controls more than 30% of the recorded music biz. This deal is directly correlated to where and how you might hear some of your tunes in the future.—QH

Iran and U.S. agree to two-week ceasefire. Donald Trump said he would “suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks” subject to Iran allowing shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump indicated that a 10-point Iranian proposal for a peace deal — which reportedly includes lifting of sanctions on Iran, a toll on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from bases in the region — would serve as the basis of negotiations (Reuters)

AI rivals team up to fight Chinese copycats. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have reportedly started sharing information to detect attempts at adversarial distillation, where firms use an older AI model to train a newer one without authorization. Last year, OpenAI accused Chinese AI company DeepSeek of using distillation to train its chatbot. (Bloomberg News)

Toronto home sales up for the first time this year. Monthly sales in Canada’s largest housing market rose 1.4% in March compared to February — the first month-over-month increase since September of 2025. The boost came as the home price index continued to drop. However, it’s unclear if it indicated a broader turnaround in buyer sentiment. (Globe and Mail) 

📡 What else is on our radar: 

Sales is the engine of every great business, and the people who've mastered it, built teams around it, and turned it into a competitive advantage deserve their moment.

The Peak's 2026 Emerging Leaders list is recognizing top talent across 12 industries, including sales. In our 6 years running this list, we've recognized more than 1,000 Canadians doing outstanding work in their fields.

Know a sales leader whose results speak for themselves? Or maybe that's you. Nominate before the deadline and make sure exceptional work gets the recognition it deserves.

🤝 Meet Moez Kassam. He’s the chairman and co-founder of the Toronto-based hedge fund Anson Funds, an avid philanthropist, and a self-proclaimed food addict. We sat down with Moez to talk about his favourite places to eat in Toronto, why asking for coffee chats isn’t good networking, and how skipping class at Western to day-trade shorts set his career in motion. 

You got your start while still at Western University after borrowing $6,700 from a classmate to buy shorts. What convinced you so early on that this was the path you wanted to take?  

It’s a funny story. In my last year of high school, I had a manual labour job and made around $1,500–$2,000. I started taking basic economics classes and thought I understood markets. I got emails saying “buy this stock, it’ll go up 400%,” and I believed it. I invested my money, and within weeks, it dropped 75%.

I looked into it and found people shorting the company and calling it out as a fraud. I realized I’d been duped. I didn’t even know what shorting was. So I started learning about short selling, following people online who were identifying fraud. I realized if I could get duped, so could others, and there was an opportunity there.

One night at a bar at Western, a friend of mine from Russia had $100,000 sitting in his account. I asked, why don’t you lend me $10K? I’ll pay you 7% instead of the 5% you’re earning, and he said yes. That’s how it started. I began trading, focusing on shorts, and quickly realized that every time I went to class, I missed trades. So I moved all my classes to night.

You focus a lot on finding overvalued companies. Without giving away trade secrets, is there a sector right now you see as overhyped?

We go where the hype is. Where there’s hype, there’s fraud. Where there’s fraud and hype, there are deals. Where there are deals, there’s activism. Everything we do revolves around what’s topical. Right now, the biggest thing is AI. Everyone is talking about AI every day.

If you’re raising money, it’s much easier to get attention if you say “AI” than if you’re pitching something obscure.

Before AI, it was crypto. Before that, marijuana. Before that, autonomous driving. There’s always a theme that’s hot, and people pile into it. And with that, you’ll get fraudulent companies popping up just to ride the wave.

What would be your advice to young Canadians trying to break into your industry? 

I don’t think there’s enough emphasis on actual networking. People are always like, “Hey, can you help me get a job?” And I’m like, no I can’t help you get a job. What I can help you with is networking. Everyone now is relying on ChatGPT. Any legit employer or person you’re emailing gets that kind of message all the time, and you can tell immediately. If you want to email me and ask for something, I want to know you put in the time and effort yourself and found something creative to talk about.

People feel entitled. They think writing a ChatGPT paragraph and asking for a coffee is enough. I get those requests all day. But if you take the time — like what I used to do — I’d learn everything about someone and find five interesting things about them. Then I’d say, this person either put in serious effort or they’re very sharp—either way, they’re worth meeting.

But someone who just says “Hey, can I grab a coffee?”, that doesn’t stand out at all.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read the full Q&A here. 

With five times as many break-ins as the rest of the city, residents in one of Canada’s ritziest neighbourhoods are taking matters into their own hands. 

Driving the news: Homeowners in Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood are considering implementing an AI-powered surveillance system called Flock that is being billed as Canada’s first-ever “virtual gated community.”

Why it’s happening: Rosedale is seeing an outsized number of break-ins and robberies. Over the past decade, home invasions and break-and-enters have fallen 27% across the city, while in the Rosedale neighbourhood, they’re up 145%. 

Why it matters: On paper, the Flock system promises to reduce break-ins, but it also has a history of being used in controversial ways. The system has proven to be hackable in under 30 seconds, it’s helped ICE detain and deport kids at schools, and has even been used by law enforcement to track a woman in Texas who had an abortion (which was, in that state, unlawful). 

Zoom out: Amazon-owned Ring — which actually ended a partnership with Flock in February after its creepy Super Bowl ad — has faced similar backlash over its partnerships with police and concerns that its cameras are already being used to spy on the public.—LA

🚛 2.1 million. Commercial truck trips that were made across the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia, Ontario, last year, more than the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. It’s the first time in decades that the Detroit-Windsor bridge hasn’t been Canada’s busiest commercial crossing.

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