Several years ago it was reported that French conglomerate Vivendi was trying their hand at a hostile takeover of Ubisoft. Ubisoft on their end refused to give themselves over to Vivendi, and now it looks like Vivendi’s attempts will be no more as it has been confirmed that they will be officially backing off.
This was revealed by Ubisoft where it seems that not only will Vivendi be giving up trying to acquire Ubisoft, but they will also be selling off all their stakes in the company which is said to be worth $2.45 billion. However what’s ironic about this deal is that in order to help raise the funds to purchase back the shares from Vivendi, Ubisoft had to enlist the help of Tencent (who owns Riot and Epic Games), along with a buy-in from the Ontario Teachers’ pension fund.
Note that the deal is sort of temporary as part of the agreement is that Vivendi will not be acquiring anymore shares in Ubisoft for the next five years. Once that five years is up we suppose it’s anyone’s guess as to whether or not Vivendi will be trying to acquire Ubisoft once again. Or perhaps Ubisoft might be more amenable to an acquisition then.
Vivendi is a huge company that owns multiple brands and companies under its umbrella. At one point in time it used to own companies like Activision and Blizzard Entertainment before it spun off from Vivendi under the Activision Blizzard banner.
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