Ubisoft Investors Call for Renegotiation of Recent Subsidiary Deal Involving Tencent
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- Ubisoft minority investor, AJ Invesments, demands that the subsidiary deal with Tencent be renegotiated.
- The shareholders mentioned that they have no idea how the deal will benefit them in the future.
- Ubisoft’s stock price dropped a few days after they announced the subsidiary deal with Tencent.
Ubisoft investors have demanded that the studio renegotiate the deal regarding the recent Tencent subsidiary agreement. According to them, it remains unclear how the deal will ultimately benefit shareholders.
The one who called for the renegotiation is an entity named AJ Investments, and they are initiating legal proceedings in France. “We are demanding that a French court compel Ubisoft to convene an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM), giving all shareholders the right to vote on two critical resolutions,” the email reads. According to Insider Gaming, this email was sent to them and Ubisoft.
The first resolution demands that Ubisoft restructure the deal to a direct asset sale for no less than €4 billion. The second one mentions that the shareholders must receive €23 per share in cash to shareholders if the first resolution is approved.
Additionally, the letter asked to exclude Tencent from voting. Guillemot Brothers’ voting rights, on the other hand, should only be limited to their non-Tencent-linked shares.
The deal in question happened in late March when Ubisoft announced that they are creating a subsidiary that will focus on three IPs: Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. Tencent will have a 25 percent stake in the new subsidiary, and the deal is expected to close this year, according to The Verge.
On March 31, Insider Gaming reported that Ubisoft’s stock prices fell a few days after the announcement of the deal. This was also touched upon in the letter they received from AJ Investments. “Ubisoft’s share price fell by more than 20% on unusually high volume. This signals a clear verdict from investors — the proposed deal is deeply flawed, structured to bypass mandatory public offer rules, and designed to entrench control by the Guillemot family, who now hold less than 10% of the company’s economic interest.”
On March 20, Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the latest installment to the Assassin’s Creed franchise. The release was met with positive reviews, even reaching an 85/100 score on Metacritic for its Xbox Series X/S version. A week after its release, the studio announced that the game had reached more than 3 million players.
