Tag Archives: merger

Tecmo and Koei revealed today that the two companies have merged and have now formed Koei Tecmo Holdings.

The deal will be finalised as per April 1, 2009.

The companies reveal their merger plans in September last year after Tecmo turned down Square’s advances earlier that same month.

Thanks, Kotaku.

By Mike Bowden

Speaking to GI at BlizzCon, Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime said that merging with Activision will allow the firm to move to consoles when it likes, and said being first in the console space with an MMO isn’t a requirement to taking a significant share of the market.

“I think that, it comes down to games, so I’m not too worried about being first to make a claim or first to take a market share,” he said. “Actually Blizzard has rarely been the first to create a genre, unless you consider Diablo a new genre, nobody said that at the time, they all said it wasn’t new.”

“For us we’re looking for what is the next thing, what is the next step, what is the next evolution and I think that it’s not really dependant on platform.”

“That argument probably gets even more powerful with the partnership with Activision,” he added. “Activision will have a strong business on consoles so whenever Blizzard decides to go and enter the console market we have this huge infrastructure of people that is already successful in the console business, so I don’t think we’re losing anything.”

More through the link.

Tecmo and Koei have announced that a solid plan to merge the two companies will be in place within two months, Kotaku reports.

“A committee has been formed to oversee the business of the two newly-merged companies, comprised of the presidents of both companies (acting as joint-chairmen) as well as executive representatives and non-executive representatives of both companies,” said the firms in a statement.

“This integration will allow employees to demonstrate the full extent of their abilities, so as to best serve the company in the future. This committee is expected to produce a concrete integration scheme for unifying the two companies in the next two months.”

The new emerges after Tecmo shrugged off Square advances at the beginning of September.

Here. Some American investors are getting worked up over the Activision Blizzard deal, saying that Activision could have got better terms.

“The merger, stock purchase and tender offer, working in concert, convey control of Activision to Vivendi but fail to offer the Activision stockholders an opportunity to realize a true control premium for their stock,” lawyers for the Michigan-based investment group said in the complaint.

Take a look for yourself.

Speaking at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, Blizzard boss and co-founder Mike Morhaime has shown off a slide full of projects that never saw light of say, saying, “We don’t have a 100 percent success rate. We just don’t release failures.”

The unused projects included titles such as Crixa, Shattered Nations, Pax Imperia and Denizen.

Morhaime also spoke on the impending merger of Activision and Blizzard, joking, “Once the Activision Blizzard merger goes through, Bobby Kotick will be my eighth boss.”

DICE comes to a close tomorrow. The Interactive Achievment Awards are going to be announced at the summit sometime this evening.

So says this. According to a proxy statement filed with the SEC today, the giant Activision Blizzard “deal traces its roots to late 2006, when Activision’s management decided to pursue some kind of linkup with the games unit of the French entertainment and telecommunications conglomerate. It didn’t take long for Vivendi to take Activision’s bait. By April 2007, Activision had an offer on the table that valued its stock at $23.38. From there, things went anything but smoothly, as no fewer than two times, one side or the other called off the talks.”

Funny stuff. Take a look.