April 18, 2008
Electronic Arts announced this morning that it is extending its tender offer for outstanding shares of Take Two stock until May 16th. The original offer was set to expire at midnight tonight.As expected, EA also reduced its offer price from $26 per share to $25.74 to reflect the economic impact of the huge compensation package awarded to Strauss Zelnick and his team at last evening's Take Two shareholders meeting. From EA's press release:
EA continues to believe that the offer price is full and fair, and that a transaction between Take-Two and EA is the most compelling combination financially, strategically and operationally for all parties.
As of 5:00 p.m., EDT, on April 17, 2008, 6,432,787 shares of Take-Two had been tendered in and not withdrawn from the tender offer.
UPDATE: Bloomberg has more on the EA-T2 situation, including a recap of last night's meeting. Next Generation has news of an angry T2 shareholder who is suing the company over its rejection of the EA bid.
And from Reuters comes word that U.S. District Court Judge Shirley Wohl Kram has ruled that, in yet another shareholder suit, plaintiffs failed to show a linkage between the 2005 Hot Coffee scandal and a subsequent, precipitous drop in the price of T2 shares.
UPDATE 2: Take Two has issued a response to EA's new price & deadline:
The minuscule number of shares tendered [to EA, 8.3% of total outstanding shares], as well as the strong vote in favor of the proposals presented at our annual meeting, offer indisputable evidence that our stockholders regard our efforts to enhance Take-Two’s stockholder value as superior to the EA offer.
...Take-Two’s Board of Directors has maintained from the beginning, and continues to believe, that EA’s proposal undervalues our Company. It undervalued the company at $26 per share, and it certainly undervalues Take-Two at $25.74.
Comments
Well... i DON'T follow GTA news, because i don't really follow GTA. I just haven't seen nearly as much hype for it outside of the regular fanbase.
My initial point was talking about Keith calling GTA4 the 'biggest release' with emphasis on RELEASE. Not necessarily biggest overall sales over any span of time. Just the RELEASE. Which, comparatively, you have to admit, there was a pretty big difference in some ways. *points to Game Fuel*
Jeez, i didn't mean to make some huge argument here. I don't even like the Halo series any more than most other FPS games, i just misunderstood his comment.
@ Ragnaar
Perhaps this Mr. Maulano is the so-called client that JT claimed to have after he was denied entry to the conference?
They're just a bunch of absolute retards over at EA.
Note to EA: Unless you're going to drop $50 a share, you can fuck right off, because those shareholders a sitting on a Gold Mine you want to undercut from right under them. You are dirty-handed sheisters and I hope your company melts away from below your feet.
They aren't offering less money overall, just less per share. T2 created a bunch of shares in their meeting as the full article from Bloomberg says. EA is still offering $2 bill, total, which is now $25.74 per share, rather than $26.
Now the question on everyone's mind: Where's JT?
hint: it isn't.
'Biggest game release of all time'?
I know this is slightly off-topic, but... come on, highly-anticipated, yes, but biggest release of all time? No, Halo 3 takes that by a long shot. (Hell, SSBB probably had somewhat more hype than this game, i think)
Still, it is greedy of them.
Yeah... I'm sure the share holders will vote for that one...
@DavCube: Follow the news. Most analyst and industry "experts" predict that GTAIV's release will blow Halo 3's out the water. Most are predicting that Grand Theft Auto IV will bring in $400 million in sales in it's first week as compared to Halo 3's $300 million. Considering the amount of perfect scores that's been stacking up, that's starting to look pretty feasible. I haven't even mentioned the dual platform simultaneous release.
----
Papa Midnight
Jack Thompson?
*checks*
ZOMG! IT ISN'T!
OR, you can vote on EA's side when the hostile takeover attempt begins.
OR, you can sell your stock if you're displeased with how the company is running.
It's just like politicians...if you have a bad one, you vote him out the next chance you get.
EA has wrecked every franchise they've aquired. They shouldn't be so quick to count sports games as money in the bank either. I've bought exclusively T2 for years now. With them gone, and prices jacked back up, I will simply go without rather than buy EA garbage. I've got Halo 3, I'm plenty happy to keep playing that.
I'd say unless EA drastically raises it's offer, the take over bid is going to fail. Just too many shareholders that recognize that the company is worth more than EA's offering.
You guys are talking like Halo3 is the biggest selling game of all time... I'm sure it isn't. It just sold more in a short space of time than any other.
Also, Halo 3 is Xbox 360 only. That limits the entire market you can sell to to about 12 million users.
GTAIV is on both PS3 and Xbox 360 and will be out on PC later in the year too... that totals to well over 100 million potential customers.
"I’ll rent it, sure, but not buy it"
Yeh, and get through less than 1% of the game... what's the point.
I will bet a large sum of money against any of you that GTAIV will outsell Halo 3 by the end of the year by at least 1½ times. Parents do not (or should not) be buying this game for their kids. It is for people like me :) And we number in the millions, I assure you ;)
It's off topic, but I'll bet if you rent it, you buy it. Personally, I say go the route of the retail price, rather than the retail price + the rental price.
This will be the best selling game so far this generation. And for those who keep bringing up Halo 3, please be reminded that CoD4 outsold it in a shorter amount of time. I'll bet that GTAIV will go one better.
Halo 3 may be pretty big, but I think The Sims has beat that out as the best selling game of all time.
Okay... he's suing because they didn't want to be taken over... he wanted to be bought out for more than his shares were worth. Such a lawsuit should be thrown out for the simple idea that a company should just have the right to say 'no' to a takeover... and that the right to refuse helps to strengthen laws against monopolies.
This is why the gaming community hates EA right now and they may end up putting themselves out of business.
By the way, to everyone saying that Halo 3 is the biggest game of all time...it isn't, and neither is GTA IV. The biggest game of all time is and will most likely always be "Super Mario Bros" for the original Nintendo.
Game Fuel was mighty tastey :D.
Also I still have a strong dislike for EA killing WestWood. I can't hate them because of Bioware or C&C 3.
WestWood made RTS what it is today. I want PetroGlyph working on C&C not EA LA >_
If it did go through already we'd be seeing like a month delay while they change all the funny parody ads to real world ads for pepsi and nike.
The law might be clear on that (i'm no expert so I can't say) , but I believe you're not thinking far enough. If they make a good game, sell to EA and then it goes down the drain, the shareholders will lose a lot of money.
EA has already scrapped a lot of good developpers (Maxis, Westwood and Bullfrog, for exemple). Since they want no competition in the sport games, there is a good chance they'll scrap quite a good portion of Take Two. If I was in the board of directors, I honestly wouldn't think a buyout from EA would be best for the company IN THE LONG RUN. Especially with the talks of anti-monopoly law problems.
And the big daddies would have Nike logos on their boots.
And then they'd churn out some stuff packs with cosmetic changes as well as expansion packs for gameplay changes. Who knew the Big Daddies could speak Simlish?