Gameloft's company shareholders have backed a hostile takeover bid from Vivendi.
According to Gamespot, this will give Vivendi enough voting power to kick Gameloft boss Michel Guillemot from his role as chief executive. French regulators are expected to officially announced the bid's acceptance tomorrow, and Guillemot is expected to resign following this news.
Some analysts believe Vivendi will then turn its eyes to Ubisoft, and Michel Guillemot is expected to join his brother Yves Guillemot, who is CEO of Ubisoft, in trying to resist the takeover.
Vivendi sold its controlling stake in Activision Blizzard in 2013, and has since been growing its minority stakes in both Gameloft and Ubisoft. Vivendi currently has an 18 percent stake in Ubisoft, which has been seeking Canadian investors to try and avoid a takeover.
According to Eurogamer, one analyst believes a takeover would actually be good for Ubisoft in the long term due to the company's reliance on "hits."
"[Ubisoft] doesn't have an Assassin's Creed iteration this year, and it isn't in a position to acquire market share like Activision's King purchase," said analyst Christine Arrington. "So, if a deal could be structured where Ubisoft sees an influx of capital to invest in its diversification strategy, and Vivendi takes a hands off approach, it might not be a bad thing for the company and even its founders if they can come to a mutual agreement."
Matt Porter is a freelance writer based in London. Make sure to visit what he thinks is the best website in the world, but is actually just his Twitter page.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire