French media company Vivendi rushes its takeover on Ubisoft this year as part of ifs expansion strategy in the video game industry. Its other plan is to expand to the advertising industry with the multinational advertising and public relation company Havas as the target.
According to Reuters, Ubisoft will be Vivendi's first target before Havas. For the past three years, the company has failed to impress its shareholders as it continued to perform poorly, despite a large-scale expansion. Despite its aggressive expansion plan by acquiring two Italian media companies, but Vivendi's shares keep plunging.
Vivendi chairman Vincent Bollore, who has spent $16 billion to acquire Telecom Italia and Italian broadcaster Mediaset, has come up with the plan to expand the company's business into the video game and advertising. He gave the detailed plan during the shareholders meeting which was held last Tuesday, April 25 in Paris as reported by Game Spot.
His first target is the video game company Ubisoft, which Vivendi currently owns 25 percent of the company's share. However, five brothers of Guillemot as the founder of Ubisoft are expected to oppose the acquisition.
Bollore has been targeting Ubisoft since two years ago, when he acquired 6 percent shares of the maker of "Tom Clancy" video game franchise in October 2015. He intensified his shares by a hostile takeover of another video game maker Gameloft in February last year. Following the successful takeover of Gameloft, Bollore and Vivendi now owns 25 percent of the share and 22 percent voting rights of Ubisoft.
Prior to Vivendi's takeover of Gameloft, which previously owned by one of the Guillemots family Michel and his partner Josh Closson, Ubisoft has been aware of the hostile takeover attempt by Vivendi. Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot has asked other investors to help the company from the takeover. However, Vivendi has geared up to take over Ubisoft and own the "Tom Clancy" video game franchise which has just celebrated its the second anniversary of "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Siege" professional competition as shown in the footage from Ubisoft below: