10% of Ubisoft Shareholders Support Option to Sell Company
The AJ Investment fund itself owns less than 1% of Ubisoft's shares, but its idea to sell the company has won the support of 10% of shareholders.
The Ubisoft shareholder calling for the sale of the company gained 10% support from the company's investors.
As reported by Reuters, Slovak hedge fund AJ Investments – the same one that is also demanding the removal of Yves Guillemot as Ubisoft CEO – owns less than 1% of the French publisher's shares, but managed to gain the support of 10% of the company's shareholders. The group is calling for the sale of the company to "external entities" or as part of so-called "private equity" for a fair price.
This is another effect of the recent turmoil surrounding Ubisoft, which has suffered significant losses on the stock market not only yesterday (the company has recovered some of its losses, but its share price is still about 18% lower than it was on September 25) but also over the past few months. The result was the dissatisfaction of investors, who forced the initiation of an investigation to "improve the functioning" of the publisher.
As mentioned earlier, the publisher's concerning state is due to the unsatisfactory performance of their latest games. Ubisoft has not experienced a disaster on the level of Concord so far (although one of the supposedly emerging projects gave players the impression that the company was aiming for it), but it's difficult to identify a title from recent years that can be celebrated as a significant success without adding a big "but." Skull and Bones, XDefiant, even AC: Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and Star Wars: Outlaws – none of these titles were hits worthy of a major publisher like Ubisoft is (or should be).
Neither representatives of the Guillemot family nor Tencent (the two largest shareholders of the company) commented on this information. Meanwhile, representatives of AJ Investments announced that they will hold talks with Ubisoft's management next Tuesday.
