Vivendi has revealed that it will sell all of its shares in Ubisoft by 5th March 2019, finally putting an end to the power struggle that has been taking place between the two firms over recent years.
Ubisoft has been fending off an "unsolicited and unwelcome" takeover bid from Vivendi for some time now; back in 2015, the mass media conglomerate started to buy large chunks of Ubisoft's shares, forcing the game developer to seek a higher number of Canadian shareholders to "have better control over the capital", and causing numerous concerns for the company's future. The struggle has been ongoing and increasing, with Vivendi reportedly owning a 27.27% stake in Ubisoft by the start of 2018.
Earlier this year, though, Vivendi decided to pull the plug on the takeover, announcing that it would sell its entire stake in the publisher. The move came as a result of Ubisoft's efforts to protect itself - whereby it repurchased its own shares and took investment from the Ontario Teachers’ Public Equities division and Chinese firm Tencent - and the dates have now been put in place to seal the deal.
It's believed that Vivendi currently owns around 6.7% of Ubisoft's shares and, according to MCV, 0.91% of these will be sold on 1st October, with the remaining (approximately) 5.74% being sold on 5th March. The total value of these shares is said to be "at around €500 million (£444m), with sales pre-agreed at €66 (£58.60) per share".
So is this truly the end of Ubisoft's struggles against the French conglomerate? Well, it is for now - part of this new agreement between the two firms states that Vivendi will refrain from repurchasing any Ubisoft shares for five years.
You wouldn't know it from the happy, colourful vibes in recent releases like Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, but Ubisoft's been having a bit of a tough time just lately. This deal will be a huge relief for those involved, we're sure.
[source mcvuk.com]
Comments (22)
Great... this been a distraction from ages.
Very happy for Ubisoft
Ubisoft are my favourite 3rd party publisher by a long way. I know they receive some flack at times but at the same time you would never see EA or Actilizard letting staff publish a game like Child of Light.
They’re constant support for Nintendo has always been welcome, and despite the quality of some titles, I have genuinely enjoyed the escapades of the Assassins vs Templar’s over the years. I can’t think of a multi-game-spanning story I have enjoyed as much as Assassin’s Creed.
I don’t know why they don’t port 1-4 and Chronicles to the Switch.
@RadioHedgeFund As much as I agree with you about Ubisoft being awesome, EA did publish Fe, and Activision did recently publish White Night. Not really the best argument.
This is fantastic news for everyone, and I more than slightly suspect the whole situation has been a driving force in some of Ubi's more questionable decisions in recent years as the primary model of business had to be driven not by how to profit more by selling more games people want by how to arrange things to fend off buyout opportunities.
OTOH I was unaware of Tencent being involved in staving off Vivendi. That's kind of like inviting the lion to dinner to protect yourself from the pack of wolves, isn't it? It also makes me more concerned over exactly what datamining is happening with their always-online shenanigans.
Nice.
Now, once you get all the shares back, buy all the others from whomever and just take the company private like Valve.
Sorted.
Ubi, for your freedom I will buy AC: Odyssey.
Now make a M+R sequel.
To investors all they see are those expensive IPs, Vivendi probably wanted to get their hands on that and push them to be some mobile game studio. Some companies it makes sense to go public, but for a game studio where your IPs are your driving force for income I find that to me risky.
Give me a new Rayman, Ubi!
YES!
Man, I'm glad for Ubisoft! A hostile takeover by Vivendi would be bad for pretty much everyone except Vivendi...
@LittleLion Technically it woudln't have even been that good for Vivendi either. Vivendi's operating model is simply to liquidate and bleed dry acquisitions simply for liquidity to bail out their always-failing core business. They don't even buy out to gain power, influence or market. They buy out companies to get quick resources to cover their ever expanding debts.
Bad versus evil.
YES.
Go Ubi.
Now how about you sell those stocks directly to Big N?
edit: Might have to buy some of that sweet Ubi myself
Ubisoft is similar to Nintendo in that, with some dumb decisions usually comes good and great games with a lot of talented people. While they sometimes fall into the slimier business practices of AAA gaming, I think they're a good company and can really hit it out of the park when things come together.
Glad to see they're doing well, I just hope they're careful about who buys their shares in the future, lest history repeat itself.
They are safe for another 10 years until someone else tries to hostile take over them. EA “tried” it before too.
My money is on Square Enix trying next.
Time will tell if this changes literally anything. I'm not convinced, mostly because a lot of Ubisoft's antics started before this news arose. If this leads to an end to their "live service" initiative that has been poisoning their output for a while now, then this'll be great news...but considering how exploitative the video game whaling industry has been in and outside of the AAA space, I'd find it hard to believe Ubi has any incentive to stop, at least not before they've squeezed their consumers dry and burnt out all of their employees, like one big corporate wildfire...
@BladedKnight
yeah definitely hyped AC is just genius. Love all their games, i am really addicted to GhostRecon wildlands lol.
I’m concerned by the fact that Tencent bought the shares. These guys are a monstrous company, especially with their mobile side. Wonder if they just didn’t invite someone else to buyout?
@ecco6t9 Square Enix ain’t that bad actually.
Vivendi would have been the end of Ubisoft as we know it.
Activision and Blizzard have struggled and fought for years to get rid of Vivendi and finally managed to buy themselves out of that stranglehold a couple years ago.
They practically held a huge celebration party afterwards lol.
Vivendi is absolute evil. They make Warner Bros. look good.
I'm happy for them, but I'm not a fan of most of Ubi's work lately. Child of Light, Rayman, and Mario + Rabbits are exceptions but most of their games all play the same, the same boring open worlds with no life to them and plenty of repetition.
@Dalarrun South Park games are great too. So was Valiant Hearts, Trials, Trackmania, Rainbow Six Siege. And, Watch Dogs 2 was a very well-made open world game, that didn't bore me one minute.
Add the games you name to that list... And you get quite an impressive and diverse list of games, that all achieved critical acclaim. They are way cooler than most give them credit for.
@Kidfried I'll give you those, I mostly have a problem with their really lazily made open world games. Forgot all about Trials, love those games.
You can swap out Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and the newest Ghost Recon and it wouldn't matter because the design and mission structure are all the same. Radio towers, a handful of side missions that are all repetitive and you do them over and over again just to pad out content, and a ton of collectables to give you the illusion that there's stuff in these empty worlds. Jim Sterling talks about this in a more interesting way, you should check his videos out on the state of the "AAA" game industry.
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