EA Bids for Take-Two
From Gamasutra:Electronic Arts has put forward a formal offer to acquire Grand Theft Auto creator Take-Two Interactive in an all-cash merger valued at approximately $2.0 billion.
According to an announcement released mid-Sunday by EA, ahead of an early Monday conference call: "EA’s proposal of $26 per share in cash represents a premium of 64 percent over Take-Two’s closing stock price on Feb. 15th, the last trading day before EA sent its revised proposal to Take-Two, and a 63 percent premium over Take-Two’s 30-day trailing average price over the thirty trading days ending on that date.
Well, there you go. In another year or two, EA will own every single developer in the world, and everything they publish will come out with titles like these:
SPORTS 2010
RPG 2010
FPS 2010
The executive board of Take-Two refused this offer, which is why EA made the offer public. And if you're wondering about the last time Take-Two stock reached $26 a share, it was in mid-2005.
I've unfortunately been sick as a dog for three days, so I don't have any further thoughts on this now, but when my head clears (insert your punch line here) I'll be exploring it in more detail.
Here's one more link I just saw: Kotaku has an interview with Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello about the offer.
Looking back on it, Riccitiello's "we blew it" presentation at DICE on February 8 (where he fell on his sword about how EA Borg'd many of the their studio acquisitions, and claimed to now be using an enlightened "city-state" model) seems to have been very conveniently timed.
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