EA To Make Hostile Bid For Take-Two: Take The Money And Run

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA) is not going to wait any longer for Take-Two (NASDAQ: TTWO) to put off the larger company’s $26 a share offer. Take-Two claims it is looking for a better deal,

But, no better deal has come along. In TTWO’s latest quarter, the company lost money. Before the EA offer, Take-Two shares traded at $17. There will be no other bid from anyone else. Take-Two is a perfect fit for larger video game firm EA. The combination will allow for large cuts in staff, overhead and marketing costs.

To get what it wants, EA will begin a hostile bid for Take-Two’s shares. According to The Wall Street Journal "EA plans a tender offer to acquire all of Take-Two’s outstanding shares for $26 each."

Most companies which receive an offer at a huge premium from a larger company in their industry should simply not waste time fighting. The lessons of Dow Jones with the bid from News Corp (NYSE: NWS) and Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) offer for Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) tell the same thing. The chance to save money by putting together two operations in the same basic business combined with a price offer way above market almost always leads to the same end. Wall St. quickly understands that it is the best deal in the world.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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