Vivendi Denies Trying To Take Over Ubisoft As It Raises Its Stake To 18%

Vivendi has increased its stake in fellow French company Ubisoft to 17.73 per cent and now has 15.66 per cent of voting rights in the Assassin’s Creed publisher, Reuters reports.

The company increased its stake to more than 10 per cent last October and 15 per cent in February.

In February, Ubisoft said it was seeking investors in a bid to pre-empt a potential hostile takeover bid. The company began courting possible partners in Montreal, Toronto, and London, and said it would also welcome direct investment from Canada’s government. The country’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau toured the Ubisoft Montreal campus with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot earlier this year.

“We want to increase the number of Canadian shareholders in Ubisoft to have better control over the capital,” Guillemot commented at the time. “We feel it’s a good defense.”

Despite Vivendi’s increased shares and voting rights, Reuters notes that Vivendi “has no plan to seek control of Ubisoft or submit a public offer for outstanding shares.”

Vivendi would need to purchase an additional 12 per cent of shares in order to trigger a mandatory takeover bid. This happened to Gameloft in February when Vivendi increased its ownership in the mobile games developer to more than 30 per cent.

In July 2013, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick led an $8.2 billion buyout of Vivendi’s stake in the company, buying 611 million shares in the process.

Ubisoft has already launched Far Cry: Primal and Tom Clancy’s The Division this year. It has stated that it will not release an Assassin’s Creed game this year and Watch Dogs 2 is expected to replace the game. The company recently confirmed its E3 show.