Vivendi might not sell Activision Blizzard – Video Games Update
Vivendi has been considering other options to raise capital as it’s having trouble finding a buyer for Activision Blizzard and does not want to sell off the publisher at a loss.
Vivendi has been trying to dispose of its majority stake of 61 percent in Activision Blizzard for the last two months to no avail. It was revealed that the French conglomerate had approached Microsoft, Time Warner, Disney, Nexon, Tencent and Facebook but
none of the companies were willing to purchase the publisher at a 12 percent premium over the market price of $8.1 billion, the price Vivendi is demanding for the sale.
There have been new reports that Vivendi has given up on trying to sell off Activision Blizzard and instead is now trying to sell off Global Village Telecom (GVT), which is a Brazilian Telecommunications company. It is reported that the proceeds from the
sale of GVT will bring Vivendi around $8.59 billion to $10.42 billion which will be a far greater amount compared to the proceeds it would have gotten from the sale of Activision Blizzard at a 12 percent premium.
There is currently no information regarding the details of the GVT sale and it is currently unknown if Vivendi will be selling its entire stake in the telecommunications company or will it continue to own some part of it.
Global Village Telecom being sold off does not mean that Vivendi will not also sell Activision Blizzard as it was reported yesterday that the French conglomerate has given the publisher the option to buy itself back if it can raise the funds. Activision
Blizzard becoming independent on their own is a better option for Vivendi compared to selling the publisher off in the stock market as that will drive down the stock price resulting in a loss on the sale.
Activision Blizzard might be able to raise some of the capital by this fall as the next installment of the Call of Duty (COD) franchise, Black Ops 2 is set to be released in November. In addition to COD coming out in November, Blizzard will also be releasing
the Pandaria expansion for its popular World of Warcraft MMO in the same month.
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