Ubisoft has been fending off a hostile takeover from a French multimedia company called Vivendi for over a year now. Since early 2016 Ubisoft has been doing whatever they can to fight off the hostile takeover from Vivendi, from buying company shares back to looking for new investors.
While Vivendi has been on track to offer Ubisoft a bid to purchase the company, it's been stated that they could move on to a different company if the takeover doesn't pull through. After the most recent shareholders meeting, it was revealed by Vivendi chief operating officer Stephane Roussel that the French multimedia company had not decided what to do with Ubisoft yet.
Vivendi is still deciding whether they will continue the attempt to take over the company or simply sell off its stock in the company.
Thus far, Ubisoft has denied Vivendi a seat on the board saying that Ubisoft "shareholders don't want creeping control."
According to Bloomberg report (via Gamasutra), Vivendi will have to make their move soon. In November of this year, Vivendi's stake in Ubisoft will increase automatically due to a provision for double voting rights. This provision was created in an effort to maintain shareholder loyalty and allows shareholders to exercise double voting rights for shares they have registered and held for a certain amount of time.
Unfortunately, that increase will bring Vivendi too close to owning 30% of Vivendi. French law dictates that Vivendi must put an offer in to purchase Ubisoft when they have a 30% stake in the company. This 'creeping control' is exactly how Vivendi took over Gameloft.
Vivendi began at owning 10% of Ubisoft's shares, but they have slowly been taking more and more. In February 2016 they jumped to 15%, then to 20% in June 2016. The multimedia company jumped to owning upwards of 22.8% of Ubisoft, with 20% of the voting rights in their hands. In November 2016, Vivendi made another leap to 24% of shares and 21% of voting rights.
In December 2016, Vivendi owned 25.15% of the company and 22.92% of its voting rights and in April of this year, it was said that Vivendi would be nearing the 'second phase' of their takeover attempt. The second phase, as noted above, comes when Vivendi owns 30%, at this point they are legally obliged to place a bid on Ubisoft and pursue a controlling stake in the company.
