Ubisoft May Be The Next Publisher to Be Acquired, No Serious Talks Yet Though

Bloomberg reports that Ubisoft has drawn the attraction of several private equity firms to be acquired including Blackstone Inc. and KKR & Co, the two biggest private equity firms in the world.

According to sources, Ubisoft has yet to enter any serious talks regarded potentially being acquired and they are not sure whether its majority stakeholder, CEO Yves Guillemot with a 15% stake in the company, is willing to pursue a deal.

In response to these rumors, a Ubisoft spokesperson told Gamespot that they more or less had no comment:

“We don’t comment on rumors or speculation, Ubisoft has unmatched creative and production capacities, with more than 20,000 talented people collaborating across our global studios on game development. Thanks to them and to our long-term approach and appetite for taking creative risks, we have built some of the industry’s strongest proprietary brands and have many promising new brands and projects on the horizon.”

“We also have one the industry’s deepest and most diversified portfolios, cutting-edge services and technologies, and a large and growing community of engaged players. As a result, we’re ideally positioned to capitalize on the rapid industry growth and platform opportunities that are emerging right now.”

The reason why these companies may be looking into Ubisoft is due to the company currently being relatively cheaper. Ubisoft’s shares had fallen 41% in Paris Trading over the past year. This gives it a market value of 4.8 billion euros or $5.2 billion USD.

While no definitive reason was given for Ubisoft’s fall in stock, the company has been the center of a lot of recent controversies, including having a toxic work environment and the continued endorsement of NFTs. 

With that being said, Kotaku says that its sources in Ubisoft have claimed that the French publisher has been working with several outside consultancy firms in recent years to audit different parts of the company. They have suggested that this is to help clean up the company’s image for a potential sale. 

It should be noted that in 2018, French mass media company Vivendi attempted to buy out Ubisoft but the attempt was fended off by Guillemot’s intervention and ended up selling their training shares back to the Ubisoft founder.

Join Us!