Rumor: EA Facing Takeover Bid from Korean Giant
South Korean MMO kingpin Nexon is looking to acquire studios, and one newspaper claims that it's looking to start with the big dogs.
If you're a publisher with a lot of cash at hand, you start looking into gathering more studios underneath your giant, money-laden umbrella. That's the case with Nexon, the Korean MMO publisher best known in the west for MapleStory, as it told Bloomberg [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-20/nexon-rises-after-saying-it-may-buy-game-developers-tokyo-mover.html] that it was interested in acquiring Japanese mobile-game developers with its significant cash reserves.
However, a South Korean newspaper claims that Nexon has also contacted EA - yes, that EA - regarding a potential takeover bid. While this report does seem completely unsubstantiated, it had enough weight behind it to cause an increase of almost 6% in EA's stock prices.
It's unlikely that Nexon would be able to simply purchase the North American publishing giant in full. Even after a stellar IPO in Japan last year, Nexon only has about $1.5 billion in the bank. While you and I would probably love to "only" have $1.5 billion in cash, it's far below EA's market cap of ~$5.3 billion, meaning the best that Nexon could do would be a partial acquisition now with intent to finish the deal in the future.
Given the circumstances, this acquisition - if real - seems unlikely to move forward. If it did, however, it would give the Asian MMO powerhouse a partial claim to such noteworthy Western game series as Battlefield, Mass Effect, and Madden NFL. Nor does it mean that anything would necessarily change if it did - French conglomerate Vivendi acquired Activision in 2007 as part of the Activision-Blizzard merger, and the Call of Duty characters have yet to don so much as a single beret.
(Edge Online [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-20/nexon-rises-after-saying-it-may-buy-game-developers-tokyo-mover.html])
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If you're a publisher with a lot of cash at hand, you start looking into gathering more studios underneath your giant, money-laden umbrella. That's the case with Nexon, the Korean MMO publisher best known in the west for MapleStory, as it told Bloomberg [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-20/nexon-rises-after-saying-it-may-buy-game-developers-tokyo-mover.html] that it was interested in acquiring Japanese mobile-game developers with its significant cash reserves.
However, a South Korean newspaper claims that Nexon has also contacted EA - yes, that EA - regarding a potential takeover bid. While this report does seem completely unsubstantiated, it had enough weight behind it to cause an increase of almost 6% in EA's stock prices.
It's unlikely that Nexon would be able to simply purchase the North American publishing giant in full. Even after a stellar IPO in Japan last year, Nexon only has about $1.5 billion in the bank. While you and I would probably love to "only" have $1.5 billion in cash, it's far below EA's market cap of ~$5.3 billion, meaning the best that Nexon could do would be a partial acquisition now with intent to finish the deal in the future.
Given the circumstances, this acquisition - if real - seems unlikely to move forward. If it did, however, it would give the Asian MMO powerhouse a partial claim to such noteworthy Western game series as Battlefield, Mass Effect, and Madden NFL. Nor does it mean that anything would necessarily change if it did - French conglomerate Vivendi acquired Activision in 2007 as part of the Activision-Blizzard merger, and the Call of Duty characters have yet to don so much as a single beret.
(Edge Online [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-20/nexon-rises-after-saying-it-may-buy-game-developers-tokyo-mover.html])
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