March 19, 2007
Suddenly, Take Two Interactive may be for sale.In recent weeks there has been much coverage of a well-publicized shareholder revolt that was expected to seize control of the troubled game publisher at Friday's shareholder meeting.
That meeting won't take place, however.
This morning comes word via Take Two press release that the shareholder meeting has been rescheduled for March 29th. The time and location will be announced later today. Rather cryptically, the press release says:
The purposes of the Board's actions are to provide additional time to review the proposed actions of the shareholder group and also to evaluate alternative courses of actions that could potentially be presented to the shareholders, including a possible sale of the Company.
The current board, of course, is slated to be shown the door along with CEO Paul Eibeler should the shareholder coup, led by Strauss Zelnick, succeed. It seems likely then that the board would entertain other, more favorable options. Could the management group be looking to take T2 private?
We'll certainly hear more about this from the financial sites as the day goes on.
Comments
Basically, as long as it gets free advertising, no large company board, be it Microsoft, Sony or even EA would throw away a cash-cow format like GTA. It's almost been turned into a cult thanks to those that hate it.
I think that's one of the things that really annoys me about it all, if it hadn't been for Anti-game activists, GTA would probably be fading out as a genre now.
EA on the one hand is the world's biggest game publisher and would love to find a way to maintain it and even become bigger and taking out their biggest of competition and absorbing their popular titles would be the perfect way to do that.
If Microsoft did it on the other hand though it would allow them another one-up against Sony as they would have more power in terms of exclusives and timed exclusives, so taking away GTA, a Playstation system seller, would be a kick in Sony's nuts.
Considering the two, I'd rather Microsoft do it as they can actually make quality products and Sony deserves it (now grinning evil!).
It shouldn't have any effect on the case against JT, that was a corporate decision, and should remain in place even with a change of board, the smear campaign led by Jack is trying to create a chilling effect to T2 games, regardless of who is in charge.
(2) What effect would any of these decisions have on any reported lawsuits against them or brought by them (note the recent lawsuit agianst John Bruce, for example)?
As an aside, they are welcome to give T2 to me. I'll turn it into the game company equivilant of Microsoft. :)
Ok, so maybe that's not necessarily a "good" thing. :)
nightwng2000
NW2K Software
I could think of a few (EA, Microsoft...) but who knows. Not sure about the Private company deal, however. I guess this would be to prevent this sort of coup, and the shock waves of the Hot Coffee scandal, from destabilizing the company.
The shareholders planning to stage a coup are only 46% of the shareholders, correct? An action, such as taking control would require a majority of the shareholders to agree.. As it stands, 54% of the company has not sided with them.
I don't know a whole lot about business, but couldn't this whole take over pretty much go like so?:
46% - "We demand you fire everyone and give the company to someone better!"
54% - "No."
so more people voted for Gore didn't mean he won,votes are just a guideline anyway :P
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But this is not good news MS and EA are bad pubs for the most part they have enough properties to screw up...
Also, who's to say that Rockstar doesn't have a deal in place where they can break away and retain rights to their IPs? Really, outside of Rockstar and 2k games, what does Take-Two have?
You don't have to be incompetent, just not doing things the way everyone else would want to do it. In short, if the rest think they can make more money doing it their way instead of yours they will can you wehter you are competent or not.
Of course not everyone is like that.
Well only if you are incompetent, which in the case of Take-2, they have had mass incompetence from a long time now; financial woes notwithstanding.
Who knows, maybe SCi will buy them or Vivendi (who have problems of their own). It will be an interesting month to be sure.
By stalling a week, they probably are selling off their shares, or arranging "poison pill' plans to prevent a sale or takeover bid.
It won't save upper management or the board, however. That much I know.
They are required by federal business law to hold a shareholder meeting every year. There is not a specific time they have to have it by. They can reschedule all they want as long as it is within the fiscal year of the company.
As for the sell of the company, I don't really care as long as Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, or EA gets it. These guys are too big for their own good. But more likely, they will sell to another group of private investors who like the new board of directors. That's why I will never start a public company, I could eventually be forced out of my own company.
I wonder, though. Is there any limit on how many times they can reschedule their shareholder meeting?