Ah the majority shareholder question rears it’s head again.
The real issue is the fact the Market Cap is nowhere near what would be needed to have a controlling share of ATVI. Market cap is equal to the share price X the number of outstanding shares.
Market Cap is currently $35.56 billion while my estimate for a controlling share of ATVI is $57 billion (aka %51 of all shares). Meaning that at some stage you would need to convince those who have the shares you need to sell back to.
The Cliff Notes version is that Activision merged with Vivendi’s video game division to form ActiBlizz. In exchange, Vivendi got slightly more than 50% of ActiBlizz shares and controlling interest in ActiBlizz. Then for corporate reasons, Vivendi sold off its ActiBlizz shares for cash over the years.
So even if it might be a stretch, Blizzard Entertainment lost its ‘protector’ when Vivendi dumped its shares. In this timeline, Activision’s original rulers rule.
It wasn’t Activision that purchased Activision and Blizzard. It was a Investor group lead by Bobby Kotick. Renaming the company Activision Blizzard.
Just guessing but Vivendi made more than 1,000% return on its Blizzard Entertainment investment. Emphasis on “more than.” Better to be lucky than good, eh?
It was renamed Activision Blizzard by Vivendi when they forced the merger.
Must be 10 characters. Still no.
Sure bobby Kotick and Brian Kelly own 24% of the company. While most of the investor group has sold their shares to the public.
Must be 10 characters. No.
More misinformation here.
In 2000 Activision created their own holding company “Activision Inc” under which was Activision Publishing (the arm that does the games). Activision is defined in the merger documents as “Activision Inc” (the holding company).
Then in July 2008 Activision Inc merged with Vivendi Games (a division of Vivendi). The new company was named Activision Blizzard to reflect “the significant brand recognition, employee headcount and profit contribution that Blizzard will make to the combined organization”
On July 25th 2013 Activision Blizzard announced they were buying back 429 million and million ASAC II LP, an investment vehicle led by Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and Co-Chairman Brian Kelly, to which they have personally committed $100 million combined, separately will purchase approximately 172 million shares.
Most notably that investment group has since sold off a majority of it’s shares.
I was always confused by something. Why did blizzard team up with activision in first place? I was under the impression they were doing great by themselves.
It wasn’t Blizzard’s choice to make, it was made by Vivendi I believe.
Reduce overhead and costs at the corporate level. It also expands their assets so that instead of needing to contract out to third party, they could just go to another branch of the company and pull from them.
That was back in 2013.
They’ve since sold off most of their shares.
https://investor.activision.com/node/31071/html
https://investor.activision.com/node/31136/html
Estimates on total shares are between 769,345,142 to 2,400,000,000
Neither Bobby nor Brian Kelly have anywhere near 1,224,000,000 shares.
Mike left the old Blizzard is gone. Activision will dominate the company from now on.
Vivendi was probably looking to retrench after its digital asset acquisition binge in the 1990s didn’t pan out as expected. The brightest star in that bunch was Blizzard with that little known game, World of Warcraft followed by the BC and WotLK xpacs. No doubt the thought “who knows how long this bonanza might last” was going through their minds. So got into a position where they could cash out.
Mike’s still at Activision Blizzard , just in an advisory position. He’ still getting paid by them until the end of next year at least.
I will sell them mine if they give me $100 per share.
That’s cute… I’m sure he’s sooooo involved.
I feel ya Resurrect. I ask you to hold to something that I find comfort in as a writer and an artist. “A company built upon Intellectual Property requires creativity to flourish”. I have heard a number of people saying a number of things about this sell off. I have heard that the company dumped all of the people that built the product in the beginning. I don’t know what is true because I don’t concern myself with indicators I am not invested in. That said, I would suggest that I have rarely seen a corporate giant who “trimmed the fat” (in the form of those who built their intellectual property) and was not later passed, like they were backing up, by some hungry startup. One of my favorites is Netflix overtaking Blockbuster, or perhaps the bricks vs clicks event of Amazon bypassing Walmart.
Blizzard has never been by themselves, they’ve always been owned by a parent company. First Davidson, then CUC International, then Vivendi, and finally Activision-Blizzard. It was only when they were called Chaos Studios that they were independent.