Vivendi Seeking Activision Buyers

There's more on recent rumors that Vivendi SA is considering selling off its stake in Activision Blizzard on Reuters, where they say that the French telecom giant had decided it will divest itself of the gaming unit. The report indicates that they are gauging interest from those with suitably deep pocketbooks: "Although a formal process has not started, bankers close to Vivendi are sounding out cash-rich trade players, including China's Tencent and U.S. duo Time Warner and Microsoft, as well as private-equity heavyweights KKR, Providence and Blackstone, banking sources said." Reuters got no comment responses about this from Microsoft and Time Warner. Thanks VG247.
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Re: Vivendi Seeking Activision Buyers
Jul 11, 2012, 14:52
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Re: Vivendi Seeking Activision Buyers Jul 11, 2012, 14:52
Jul 11, 2012, 14:52
 
Beamer wrote on Jul 11, 2012, 14:03:
ASeven wrote on Jul 11, 2012, 12:43:
Parallax Abstraction wrote on Jul 11, 2012, 11:36:
ASeven wrote on Jul 11, 2012, 11:02:
Moody finds Activision a liability, and if they find the most financial solid publisher in gaming a liability they find the whole market a liability.

That's not what that means necessarily. Liabilities in accounting terms just means debts. For example, your credit card bills, car loan, mortgage etc. are all what banks call "liabilities" because it's money you owe. From what I understand, Vivendi's in pretty heavy debt right now largely due to some of their other operations that aren't profitable and they're looking to sell Activision because it's one of the few major moneymakers they have and they want the cash infusion to prop up the rest of the company. Not to say that they maybe don't also want out of it because they see the AAA market declining but Moody's saying that Activision wants to reduce liabilities likely just means reduce debt. I just checked with my Chartered Accountant girlfriend and she said that's likely what they mean. Doesn't make a huge different to me either way, just food for thought.

EDIT: Dammit Beamer!

Yes, true, Vivendi is a skinking ship too but the Moody report says for Vivendi to get rid of liabilities in the financial accounting sense while at the same time damning the industry a bit by implying it no longer is a profitable venture for investors to go there. Hence adding 2 plus 2 together I reached the conclusion that Moody may mean Activision is a liability in both senses. They know that they cannot live much longer milking the same IPs and showing no evolution or innovation.

Other funny things have happened like Ricitello, EA CEO, selling all his EA stock recently and then confessing he's afraid of his job security to Pachter which he promptly spread to the media.

Even the CEOs know what's coming.

I'll get to due process in a second, let's get to your asinine comments. Ricitello sold all his stock? WHEN? He's acquired more than he's sold over the past 2 years.

And he's afraid of job security because the stock hasn't budged. Every CEO is afraid when that happens. His job is solely to maximize shareholder value, and if the stock isn't moving then he may not be doing that. Importantly, if the stock should be falling and it's not falling as quickly then he could be considered maximizing value, so that he's concerned about his performance shows that he thinks the problem can be viewed as him, not the company or the industry.

But he did not "sell all his EA stock," and you need to stop saying things like that.

Oh my Beamer, why so emotional? One might say you sound like you have something to lose with all of this EA blunder...

Going through your rant in order:

I stand corrected, he did not sale all his stocks. He must still hold on to about 258K stocks of EA. My bad.

Your view of job security is a nice, technical and completely irrelevant since you personally have no idea what John and the investors are feeling and he certainly has fucked things up from Jan 2012 to now. To wit, From Jan 2012 to this day EA has lost in market capitalization something akin to $3B, doing a quick mental calculation. On the first stock day of Jan 2012 the Market Capitalization of EA was something bordering the $5B-$6B compared to today's $3.68B. I think that a loss of $2B+ of market capitalization is a big enough reason for any CEO to worry about his place. And you also point out all that is wrong in the gaming industry, with publishers today. EA's CEO job is to "solely to maximize shareholder value" and not actually hear what gamers, the main customers, want. No wonder this and many industries are slowly sinking, losing touch with the customers is a sure way to prevent said companies of ever making a reasonable profit ever again.
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