Electronic art, a video game manufacturer, like Madden NFLIN The battlefield And SimsIt is acquired for 55 billion US dollars, the biggest attempt to buy out in history.
In accordance with the terms of the transaction announced on Monday, the private investment company Silver Lake Partners, the Saudi Arabia and Affinity Partners Saudis Foundation will pay the company to shareholders of 210 US dollars per share. Affinite Partners is a private investment company managed by the son-in-law of President Donald Trump Jared Kushner.
Electronic art (EA) will be accepted by private. The total transaction value is overshadowed by $ 32 billion paid for the adoption of Texas Cutily TXU Private in 2007.
If the deal closes, as expected, it will put the end of the 36-year history of EA as a publicly traded company, which began with the fact that its shares had completed their first day of trading at 52 centers.
IPO appeared seven years after the EA was founded by the former Apple William Trip Hawkins, who began to play analog versions of baseball and football created by Strat-O-Matic in adolescence during the 1960s.
EA has been managing him the current general director Andrew Wilson since 2013.
The company also has roots in Canada. He bought Burnaby, BC Developer Developer Distinctive software in 1991 And renamed it into Electronic Arts Canada.
Now known as EA Vancouver, this studio continued to develop some of the largest franchises of the company, including EA Sports FC And that NHL row.
Today, EA has several other studios and offices of video games across the country, including Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto and Victoria, British Colombia, according to his web site.
One buyer also participates in the Tiktok transaction
This marks a second loud deal with the participation of a silver lake and a technological company with a legion of loyal fans in recent weeks.
The Silver Lake is also part of the recently formed joint venture, headed by Oracle, participating in the transaction to take supervision of the United States on the social video Tiktok platform, although all the details of this difficult transaction have not yet been discovered.
Silver Lake also previously bought two other well -known technological companies: the now non -existent Skype video call service for a transaction for $ 1.9 billion, completed in 2009, and the redemption of a personal computer manufacturer in the amount of $ 24.9 billion. USA in 2013 in 2013. After Dell restructured its activities as a private company, he returned to the stock market with public shares in 2018.
Being private, EA will be able to reprogram their activities without undergoing investment pressure and careful control, which sometimes force public companies to make short -sighted decisions aimed at achieving quarterly financial goals.
Despite the fact that in his video games there are still hot after EA annual income over the past three financial years, which ranges from $ 7.4 billion. USA to 7.6 billion dollars. USA.
Meanwhile, Major EA Activision Activision Blizzard was recorded by Microsoft Microsoft for $ 69 billion in 2023, while competition from mobile video games, such as Epic Games, intensified.
After former public companies were adopted by private companies, they were often exposed to extensive reduction in expenses that include dismissal, although there were no signs that it would take place with EA. After in 2024 she threw out about five percent of her labor, EA ended in March with 14,500 employees, and then fired several hundred people in May.
