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EA Europe boss Gerhard Florin has gone on the record as saying that the purchase of a 20% share of Ubisoft was not a hostile takeover and that the two companies had spoken very amicably about acquisitions and partnerships. Speaking with the French newspaper, La Tribune, Florin said “Everyone thinks that we never had talks with Ubisoft. We spoke to Ubisoft, Activision, Eidos, and a lot of other producers. We didn’t only speak of acquisitions but also industrial partnerships.” He went on to say that “there wasn’t the least bit hostility between us. We had the opportunity to buy a 20 percent stake in Ubisoft and we haven’t asked for anything.”
This is all rather at odds with Ubisoft bigwig, Yves Guillemot’s version of events. Claiming that no talks had taken place between the two companies, Guillemot and other Ubisoft executives released a statement saying that “in the absence of information from Electronic Arts regarding its intentions, the latter’s acquisition of 19.9 per cent of the groups capital is unsolicited and currently considered as hostile.”
However, while Florin has been telling anyone and everyone that EA’s intentions are really nice and fluffy, in true Splinter Cell style, the Ubisoft board have hatched a plan. No one knows what it is yet but Guillemot brilliantly claims that it will allow the company to “win”.
Sources suggest that the plan may be a merger with its mobile phone gaming subsidiary, GameLoft. A move like this would allow the Guillemot family’s large shares in both companies to be combined, significantly increasing its power in the resulting mega-company.
Pro-G hopes that whoever ends up “winning”, at least one side calls the other a n00b.
