Following positive Ubisoft earnings, Vivendi acquires even more of its stock

The dramatic dispute between Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and Vivendi continues. Despite Ubisoft’s attempts at making it abundantly clear that it wishes to operate independently, Vivendi does not pay heed and instead has continued its acquisition of additional stake in the Assassin Creed developer.

Vivendi made the announcement via a short press release today that it now officially owns more than 24% of shares in the multinational game publisher and developer. As of November 4, it owns 24.059 of share capital, which includes 21.296 percent of voting rights.

The company did not bother to offer any comment beyond that, though it has previously(and I might add continuously) insisted that it does not intend to attempt a hostile takeover of Ubisoft. It has certainly expressed a good amount of interest in obtaining a seat on the company’s board of directors. In September, a spokesperson mentioned,

We feel it would be normal as the main shareholder to have a seat on the board, but we’re not in a hurry.

When Vivendi was openly presented with a decent opportunity to seek that highly anticipated seat at the annual shareholders meeting a little later that month, it failed to do so. Though it did cause certain issues at the meeting.

While a lot of Ubisoft’s measures were passed — including the addition of two new independent members to the board of the directors, it refrained from making any votes on resolutions. This move caused the measures to not pass, prompting Ubisoft to describe Vivendi’s actions as “systematic obstruction, impeding the proper functioning of the company“.

Dhruv Chopra