From Blue's today:
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=86016I guess I'm charge of business-geek news here.
Basically, they're trying to bypass the Take-Two company officials/board of directors and take their offer directly to stock holders.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Electronic Arts Inc (NasdaqGS:ERTS - News) plans to make a tender offer to acquire all of rival video game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc's (NasdaqGS:TTWO - News) outstanding shares for $26 each, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. A spokesman for Electronics Arts was not immediately available.
On February 24 EA made an unsolicited bid of $26 a share, or $1.9 billion, for Take-Two, publisher of the Grand Theft Auto game. Take-Two rejected the bid as inadequate.
Take-Two shares closed up on Wednesday at $24.91 on Nasdaq.
I covered one of these in my newspaper days when Mesa Air Group tried to acquire the now since defunct Independence Air. I feel bad in retrospect that I didn't cover the story from all angles well - Independence Air really would've been better off accepting that offer in the long run and would probably still be in business in at least a reduced capacity now (instead, it liquidated - Chapter 7 - completely in early 2006, putting thousands of employees out of work). I didn't really look at how insane jet fuel and oil costs were getting, and how impossible it would be to run a really cheap airline in today's world without the fuel hedges that Southwest Airlines was able to do.
These things generally are really hard to pull off unless the "hostile" company makes an obscenely generous offer, or unless Take-Two's individual investors really think the company is borked up and that this is their last chance to turn a profit on the shares they own. Typically the company attempting a takeover mails each shareholder (of the company they're trying to acquire) an explanatory letter, including a form they'd sign (yay or nay).
Most big companies have a "poison pill" provision in place to thwart or at least discourage hostile takeovers. This usually means something would kick in (maybe new stock, or tons of bonuses for employees etc.) that would make the costs of the hostile takeover acquisition prohibitive. Of course, given what a money pig EA is, that might not discourage them at all.
