Ubisoft Reportedly Seeking Canadian Investors to Avoid Vivendi Takeover

blueturtle13

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/ubisoft-turns-to-canadian-investors-to-fend-off-takeover-bid/article28920702/

Ubisoft is reportedly reaching out to Canadian investors to fend off a takeover from French conglomerate Vivendi.

According to the Canadian paper The Globe and Mail, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has met with the premier of Quebec to discuss investment from the Quebec government, while other Ubisoft officials are meeting up this week with "a dozen potential investors" across Montreal and Toronto.

The Assassin's Creed publisher wants to stay independent in the face of a potential takeover from Vivendi, the mass media organisation which began to purchase shares in the company late last year.

“We want to increase the number of Canadian shareholders in Ubisoft to have better control over the capital", Guillemot told the paper.

Vivendi recently began a mandatory takeover bid of mobile publisher Gameloft after purchasing over 30% of its stock. However, Guillemot has said similar plans regarding Ubisoft were "unsolicited," and in leaked emails claimed he did not want the company to be "managed by people who don't understand our expertise and what it takes to succeed in this industry."

Nayr752

Nice read. Hopefully they keep it out of reach from Vivendi.

rojoArcueid

Best of luck to Ubi.

If Activision, of all companies, ran away from Vivendi then those guys must be pretty bad.

Asm0deus

Yuck hope they succeed in fending off vivendi...

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H0urg1ass

This could go either way.  Quebec was initially very friendly to gaming studios and many studios went there in droves due to the massive tax breaks the city offered for gaming studios.

Then they unexpectedly cut those tax breaks a couple of years ago and several studios were planning to bail.  Just as unexpectedly they reinstated those tax breaks again last year.

So who knows. Interestingly, if Ubisoft provides good French translations for their games, then they have a better chance of Quebec stepping in to help.  They are fiercely French in that regard.

TimWilson

Mtibbs1989 said:

Meh, maybe with a change in management when Vivendi takes over Ubisoft they can finally move away from the "You can only see in 30 FPS" bullshit stuns they've been pulling to hide the fact that their games are poorly optimized.

Lol Vivendi once owned Acti/Blizzard and basically forced the people who created Call of Duty out so they could do the whole pay 100$ or more every year for the same crap mechanics. Was it a great business decision? Well duh, but that said this will only make Ubisoft games worse in my opinion and since they already struggle to release competent titles on PC (most of them play like the console ports) and their console titles are for the most part meh (Listen Assassins Creed is a fun game but its a bit overdone now).
I have a feeling if The Division is a great success it will seal their fate and they will be bought and since its pretty hyped and seems to be fun, they probably will be bought by Vivendi and I will cease buying Ubisoft products altogether.  Also this is the unfortunate nature of being publicly traded..if somebody wants to overtake you and they have the money you are kind of screwed, because it will happen eventually.

Asm0deus

H0urg1ass said:

This could go either way.  Quebec was initially very friendly to gaming studios and many studios went there in droves due to the massive tax breaks the city offered for gaming studios.

Then they unexpectedly cut those tax breaks a couple of years ago and several studios were planning to bail.  Just as unexpectedly they reinstated those tax breaks again last year.

So who knows. Interestingly, if Ubisoft provides good French translations for their games, then they have a better chance of Quebec stepping in to help.  They are fiercely French in that regard.

Indeed, about the fiercely french thing you can't blame Quebec for being like that since some provinces like Ontario had a law (not anymore though) which made french schools illegal for a long time to try and kill off french by forcing french people to send their kids to english school.

http://www.citynews.ca/2016/02/22/premier-wynne-apologizes-for-1912-regulation-banning-french-in-ontario-schools/

http://tvo.org/article/current-affairs/shared-values/why-ontario-once-tried-to-ban-french-in-schools