Activision Blizzard, Inc. (nasdaq: ATVI) is a Franco-American video game developer and publisher, partially owned by conglomerate Vivendi SA. The company is the result of a merger between Activision and Vivendi Games, announced on December 2 2007 in a deal worth USD$18.8 billion. The deal closed July 9, 2008.

The company believes that the merging of the two companies will create "the world's largest and most profitable pure-play video game publisher". It believes that it is the only publisher that has "leading market positions across all categories" of the video game industry.

In April 2008, the European Commission gave permission for the merger to take place. The Commission essentially needed to approve that there weren't any antitrust issues in the mega-merger. On July 8, 2008, Activision announced that stockholders had agreed to the merger. The deal closed on July 9, 2008, and the total transaction was an estimated $18.9 billion U.S. dollars.Activision/Vivendi Games Merger Approved: Stockholders support Activision Blizzard venture

History

In December 2007, it was announced that Activision would merge with fellow games developer and publisher Vivendi Games.

René Penisson, currently a member of the Management Board of Vivendi and Chairman of Vivendi Games, will serve as Chairman of Activision Blizzard. Bobby Kotick, head of Activision will become President and CEO of Activision Blizzard.

Vivendi is the majority shareholder, with a 52% stake in the company. The rest of the shares are held by institutional and private investors and continue to be traded on the NASDAQ stock market, for the first 10 trading days post closing as ATVID, and subsequently as ATVI. Also, Activision and Blizzard Entertainment will still exist as separate entities.

While Blizzard retains its autonomy and corporate leadership (Michael Morhaime is still President of Blizzard, and their office is still located in Irvine), other Vivendi Games divisions were not so fortunate. An example of this is the long-time label Sierra Entertainment, which has been around as long as Activision. With the merger, there is a rumor that if a Sierra product does not meet Activision's requirements, "they won't likely be retained."

Results of the merger

Shortly after the conclusion of the merger, Thomas Tippl, CFO, alluded to future layoffs, stating that the company "will exterminate some of our overlap through redundancy – but we will treat people fairly and respectfully in that process."

External links

• Official Activision Blizzard site