Ubisoft has officially acknowledged and commented on rumors about a change in ownership.
Ubisoft shared this statement to Video Games Chronicle:
“Ubisoft has noted recent press speculation regarding potential interests around the Company. It regularly reviews all its strategic options in the interest of stakeholders and will inform the market if and when appropriate.
The Company reiterates that management is currently focused on executing its strategy, centered on two core verticals – Open World Adventures and GaaS-native experiences.”
The spark for all of this seems to have started last September, when a minority shareholder in the company named AJ Investments published an open letter accusing the company’s founders, the Guillemot brothers, and the second biggest shareholder, Tencent, of collusion. In particular, AJ Investments claimed that the Guillemots were taking advantage of their companies’ financial woes to buy their shares back from Tencent.
Most other outlets noted that AJ wanted Ubisoft to go private, but that was lacking the full context. AJ Investments wanted Ubisoft to hide its ongoing losses from the public so that it wouldn’t lower the value of their shares. AJ proposed a major reorganization of the company, which implied replacing the Guillemots in some way, cancelling some games, and of course, more layoffs.
A few days later, CEO Yves Guillemot stated that ”the Executive Committee, under the supervision of the Board of Directors, is launching a review aimed at further improving our execution.” This was essentially Yves stating that they would launch a formal board review, to assess the current management’s competency. While this could have put the Guillemots out of power, Yves and his brothers would have preferred that their work be assessed first before the possible alternative.
And we know about those alternatives too, as AJ Investments than revealed that 10 % of Ubisoft’s shareholders supported the idea of selling the company. This is what AJ wanted, and that takes us to the most recent news.
The rumor that Ubisoft is responding to claims that the Guillemots are considering selling the company mostly to TenCent. That rumor led to a rise in Ubisoft’s stock value, and that’s because AJ Investments and other minority investors would basically be getting what they wanted.
Patent expert Florian Mueller chimed in on how a potential buyout of Ubisoft by Tencent would affect the Microsoft – Activision deal. To cut to the chase, the UK CMA would not approve of Chinese conglomerate Tencent controlling the Activision cloud gaming rights, but there may be contractual clauses in the deal that would keep that from happening.
In this strange situation, it seems that the Chinese are in a position to embarrass both the French and the British. But if you were to say what was important were the developers keep making games, that’s what everyone wants to see too. AJ Investments made the argument that the Guillemots need to step down to keep Ubisoft successful. Regardless of how you feel about the istuaiton, we know many of you have been thinking the same thing for years. This might be the very awkward way that that actually comes to pass.
