EA Pressures Take-Two Shareholders With Deadline
EA and Take-Two continue to play ping-pong in the cat-and-mouse game of hostile takeover, shareholder manipulation, and generally fun corporate warfare. Now EA's placed an April 11th deadline on their offer to buy Take-Two shares at $26 apiece (TTWO's stock was up to $24.91 as of this morning).
EA's new deadline lands just one day after Take-Two's April 10th shareholder meeting, sending a clear message to Take-Two shareholders that the EA offer exists only for a limited time. This ticking clock is designed to pressure shareholders into selling, which they may well decide to do - EA's offer is a marginal improvement upon current stock value, and while I'm of the opinion that both the offer and the current stock price don't appropriately reflect the soon-to-be-demonstrated value of GTAIV, the timing of the offer and its deadline are clearly designed to oppose conservative thinking along those lines.
Me? I'd hold out. But then, I'm still interested in seeing what Take-Two's relatively new Zelnick government can do with the company - and I don't think being absorbed into EA is necessarily the best thing for Take-Two's properties. Then again, with Rockstar's contract with Take-Two set to expire in the not-too-distant future, this could all be much more about sports games than we've been giving it credit for.
And the good lawd knows that I don't much care what happens to sports games!
EA Puts Deadline on Take Two Offer [GamePolitics]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Miscellany on 13 March 2008
Other stuff like this: ea, hostile tackover, john riccitello, strauss zelnick, take 2, take-two
