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Vivendi may be looking to takeover other companies besides Gameloft

While Vivendi is currently trying to takeover Gameloft in a hostile bid, it looks as though there are hints that this isn’t the only company Vivendi has eyes for. One company was already hinted at in our previous article, which is Ubisoft, but Vivendi says it isn’t going for control over that company even though the current purchases of shares recently would suggest otherwise.

For those of you not familiar with what’s going on, last year Vivendi started buying up a lot of Gameloft shares. Under French law, once a company owns a certain percentage of another company’s shares, they are required to place a takeover bid for that company, which in this case is Gameloft. Vivendi has gone ahead and put a bid in to take over Gameloft as per the law and their own want as well. Vivendi is also almost there with Ubisoft as well, even though they are saying they don’t want to control Ubisoft.

Vivendi seems to be eyeballing other companies in the media sector as well. The company as a whole currently does a lot in other media sectors, but with the recent investments in a number of companies, Vivendi’s third largest business will soon be video games. It recently acquired a large stake in Telecom Italia, a Paris TV studio, and a majority stake in DailyMotion (Yahoo tried and failed to acquire DailyMotion after the French government blocked the deal).

It should be pretty interesting to see how far Vivendi goes with their investments and acquisitions, especially in the mobile gaming sector. It isn’t some random strategy that they are going after Gameloft and any other company could be next. Any guesses as to what companies might be next? Right now it is official, Vivendi holds a majority stake in Gameloft now.

Website Referenced: Techcrunch

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