Subsequent to the increase in investment, Electronic Arts announced that it reserves the right to increase its stake in Ubisoft further, pending market conditions and organisational performance over the upcoming year. They have no intention to use their newly acquired control to nominate their choice of board members, but flagged that they may choose to change their position depending on changes in Ubisoft's current position.
Electronic Arts first bought into Ubisoft in 2000, purchasing a 20% stake in a move that was described by Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft's CEO, as "hostile". Speaking at the time, he said, "I have stated on the record that I view this action on the part of EA as hostile. When looking at the longer-term, our only concern is the risk that we may not be allowed to fully realize our vocation of being creators of high quality games."
Electronic Arts has recently been signalling to the market their intention to grow through smarter acquisitions and made statements such as "Everybody is for sale." At this rate, Ubisoft may be one of the acquisitions - Guillemot spoke in May about a potential merger with Electronic Arts, saying, "We're still considering. The first option for us is to manage our own company and grow it. The second option is to work with the movie industry, and the third is to merge. We think the market is going to grow fast, and we can take a big share of that market, so we don't have to change the way things are done at the moment."
Ubisoft has yet to make any comments about the change in Electronic Arts' investment strategy.
Loading...
