In another world, Ubisoft is riding high after just releasing Star Wars: Outlaws, with Assassin’s Creed Shadows set to cement 2024 as a banger-year for the company. That’s not this world though – instead Outlaws has reportedly failed to meet expectations, and the company’s share prices have once again dropped for the second time in the last five days, keeping them near an all-time low. Putting the pressure on even more is a new open letter from hedge fund AJ Investments, in which the minority shareholder urges the company to, in so many words get the Guillemot family out, get new management in, and privatize the company through an acquisition. To be clear, the changes proposed in the letter aren’t about making Ubisoft a better studio or empowering it to make better games. They’re all proposed with the idea that shareholders will be able to get even more money from their investments. It stands though as yet another test to the Guillemot family control of the studio. Back in 2022 Tencent invested €300 million in the Guillemot family’s holding company which helped Yves Guillemot retain control of Ubisoft by giving the Guillemot family the capital to buy more shares. The letter calls the current state of Ubisoft “mismanaged” and that shareholders are “hostages of Guillemot family members and Tencent who take advantage of them.” It also threatens to start a proxy fight, and alleges that the Guillemot family and Tencent are purposely plummeting the share price of the studio to buy shares at a lower cost and take a majority position within the company. AJ Investments believes that with minority shareholders owning about 70% of the company, they can convince enough of them to challenge Guillemot and get him and his family out of the company. Again, it should be noted that this is all meant to be in service of shareholders making more money – not Ubisoft being a better game studio. Yves Guillemot has by no means been a perfect leader – Ubisoft’s own devs have called for his resignation many times before – but part of AJ Investments proposal in the open letter is to be even more aggressive with cost cutting, which will mean more layoffs. Ultimately AJ Investments describes wanting a leader who will be the cold, calculating, shareholder-optimizing type that only does what’s best for shareholders. While it may present ideas of keeping Ubisoft’s core IP’s alive and well, things that players have been missing like Splinter Cell, if the goal is only to appease shareholders then there will likely come a point where shareholders think it’s best to do away with making games entirely. You can decide for yourself if the Ubisoft proposed in the letter is one you’d like to see. Overall, this adds up to more pressure being on Assassin’s Creed Shadows to sell really, really well. Source – [VGC] The post Ubisoft Shares Drop Again, Investors Urge The Company To Change Current Management And Go Private appeared first on PlayStation Universe.
Source: https://www.psu.com/news/ubisoft-shares ... o-private/
