The folks at French media megacorp Vivendi issued a press release this week confirming their plans to finish divesting themselves of all Ubisoft stock over the next six months.
It’s not surprising, but it does seem to end the years-long saga that was Ubisoft’s increasingly desperate, increasingly public battle to remain independent under threat of a takeover by Vivendi.
After slowly accumulating 26 percent of Ubisoft’s stock and reportedly contemplating said takeover, Vivendi announced back in March that it would sell it all off to both Ubisoft and new Ubisoft investors like Tencent and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. As part of the deal, Vivendi agreed to refrain from purchasing Ubisoft stock for five years.
Now, Vivendi says it has only about 6.7 percent (with an estimated value of €500 million, or roughly $581 million USD) of Ubisoft’s share capital to sell off, and it plans to do so in two phases: 0.91 percent will be sold off on Monday (October 1st), while the remainder (~5.74 percent) has been diverted to be sold off next March.
March 5th, to be exact, which is just two days before the March 7th, 2019 divestiture deadline that Ubisoft and Vivendi previously agreed upon.