Vivendi has announced that it has entered into agreements to sell its 27.27 percent stake in games developer Ubisoft, amounting to 30,489,300 shares, for EUR 2 billion. This interest was acquired over the past three years for EUR 794 million. As part of the deal, Vivendi will no longer be a Ubisoft shareholder and has committed to refrain from purchasing Ubisoft shares for a period of five years. The move follows speculation last year that the company could face a possible hostile bid from Vivendi, despite opposition from the Guillemot family (founder and minority shareholder of Ubisoft).
In the first of the planned transactions, Vivendi has already sold 19,868,088 shares through a private placement to institutional investors at a price of EUR 66 per share. It now plans to sell at the same price per share the balance of its interest in two tranches. On 23 March, a tranche of 3,030,303 shares will be acquired by Guillemot Brothers, while Ubisoft with buy the remaining 7,590,909 shares.
Following these transactions, Ubisoft said that Chinese technology giant Tencent and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan have become long-term shareholders in the company. This coincided with the announcement of a strategic partnership between Ubisoft and Tencent to accelerate the expansion of the games developer in China.
