It has come out that Vivendi may sell its stake of 61% of Activision Blizzard (ATVI) makers of COD and WOW due to a major restructure for Vivendi.
While ATVI shares grew by over 4.5% last year, Vivendi total stock fell by a large margin of 28%.
ATVI is Vivendi’s fourth largest company, and the second fastest growing with over $4.76 billion dollars in raw sales last year, that figure not including COD: Elite or any of the MW3 DLC sales, with share value out doing both EA and Take Two.
Why would Vivendi sell the biggest name in gaming?
Well it could be as simple as a new strategy in business
“Vivendi jumped as much as 5.3 percent in Paris and Activision fell as much as 6.2 percent in New York. A sale of Activision would be an attempt by Chairman Jean-Rene Fourtou to unlock value from assets he has said are at a discount because of the holding structure at Vivendi, which also owns Universal Music Group and phone operators in France, Morocco and Brazil.
[...]
An exit from Activision would be another retreat from the globe-trotting conglomerate structure Vivendi pioneered under former CEO Jean-Marie Messier, who nearly bankrupted the company with a $77 billion acquisition spree before he was ousted in 2002. In 2009 Levy undid Messier’s signature deal by selling Vivendi’s stake in NBC Universal, the TV network and Hollywood studio now owned by Comcast Corp. (CMCSA), to General Electric Co. for $5.8 billion.”
What does this mean for you and me?
Nothing much, the likes of COD and WOW shouldn’t suffer. You’ll still get to play with Pandas and Military Drones in the coming months.
