BREAKING: Vivendi may siphon funds from Activision-Blizzard. $400 Million in debt

[Kelimbror]

As of 2013, if you make over 995'000 euros per year in France you pay 75% in tax.

France: The only country where your boss can threaten you with a raise.

Does anyone else think that this is more of an issue than the original topic? I'm utterly floored knowing that rich people have 3/4 of their income removed if they make past a certain point. It's completely illogical. I must be misunderstanding this, but I'm afraid I won't do the research to fact check myself.

[Millennía]

This ... just made me annoyed more.. Read the article, yes. And people say Blizzard and Activision are greedy?



They want to milk as much money as they can from Activision-Blizzard, without losing their grip on Activision-Blizzard. Basicly, they wish for Activision-Blizzard to almost buy them out. But it's only because they have lost the touch on youth and wishes to aim for something different.

But I see security in this, because Blizzard is still covered, none can take their budget money. They can take the future projected budget money, but not the current budget. Problem is what I see, that Vivendi has become such a leach, that even if Activision-Blizzard can pay the 5 billion, then Vivendi will proceed to get 8.5 instead. They are basicly the vampires I see now, sucking as much as they can without wanting to kill the company.

So my opinion now is, the Vivendi entered a new market that they don't understand. And suddenly can't keep up to. So they are in panic and needs more money to get running, so they are going to leach from their shares.

This is how I see it as well. If they have a choice of lose their 61% stake in exchange for cash or just take the cash and keep their 61% then it is kinda obvious. They will want to keep their 61% stake in ATVI because they can just wait until each time ATVI builds up a decent amount of cash in hand then drain it again.

[Vankrys]

This ... just made me annoyed more.. Read the article, yes. And people say Blizzard and Activision are greedy?



They want to milk as much money as they can from Activision-Blizzard, without losing their grip on Activision-Blizzard. Basicly, they wish for Activision-Blizzard to almost buy them out. But it's only because they have lost the touch on youth and wishes to aim for something different.

But I see security in this, because Blizzard is still covered, none can take their budget money. They can take the future projected budget money, but not the current budget. Problem is what I see, that Vivendi has become such a leach, that even if Activision-Blizzard can pay the 5 billion, then Vivendi will proceed to get 8.5 instead. They are basicly the vampires I see now, sucking as much as they can without wanting to kill the company.

So my opinion now is, the Vivendi entered a new market that they don't understand. And suddenly can't keep up to. So they are in panic and needs more money to get running, so they are going to leach from their shares.

i don't get what you are upset of.

when you own 61% of something, if the something make profit, you expect to be entitled to 61% of this profit, right?
for 5 years, as far as i read, vivendi haven't seen a dime on that investment, instead, it's been tucked away in a bank account. Obviously, they could leave it there in the bank but it just happens they need it to pay debt, so they making a withdrawal.

say you bought a few houses, you do expect to earn monthly rent from it right. what if for 5 years, you haven't seen a dime of that money, it goes directly into a bank account. now if you suddenly need cash, wouldn't you withdraw, after all, it's your money.

- - - Updated - - -

This is how I see it as well. If they have a choice of lose their 61% stake in exchange for cash or just take the cash and keep their 61% then it is kinda obvious. They will want to keep their 61% stake in ATVI because they can just wait until each time ATVI builds up a decent amount of cash in hand then drain it again.

remind me GTA vice city, wait a few days then collect money around the city.

[Demeia]

France: The only country where your boss can threaten you with a raise.

Does anyone else think that this is more of an issue than the original topic? I'm utterly floored knowing that rich people have 3/4 of their income removed if they make past a certain point. It's completely illogical. I must be misunderstanding this, but I'm afraid I won't do the research to fact check myself.

I believe a French court ruled that was not reasonable. They capped it at 66%--which, yah, is still pretty high. They've got to go after the middle class tax exemptions, apparently, and the already super-unpopular leader doesn't want to do that.

[Vankrys]

France: The only country where your boss can threaten you with a raise.

Does anyone else think that this is more of an issue than the original topic? I'm utterly floored knowing that rich people have 3/4 of their income removed if they make past a certain point. It's completely illogical. I must be misunderstanding this, but I'm afraid I won't do the research to fact check myself.

france is not the only country with such drastic tax law. beside very few people are affected by it. Unlike america, there aren't that many frenchman (and woman) earning more than a million a year. it only affect very high executive, artist and sport celebrities.

[Ronduwil]

This is how I see it as well. If they have a choice of lose their 61% stake in exchange for cash or just take the cash and keep their 61% then it is kinda obvious. They will want to keep their 61% stake in ATVI because they can just wait until each time ATVI builds up a decent amount of cash in hand then drain it again.

They actually tried to sell their 61% stake first but there were no takers. This is plan B.

[RicardoZ]

corporate tax in the US is 35% for income superior to 18M (which AB clearly is) if i read this correctly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpora..._United_States.

As I said, it's 33% in France regardless of how much your corporation is making. In the US it is kind of tiered. Also, in the US the law is a lot more strict about what qualifies as taxable, in France any "corporate activity" is taxable at 33%. So you might be able to tax corporations in the US at 35% (or more depending on how much they're worth), but those companies are doing a lot of things that they don't have to pay taxes for and are eligible for a lot more tax breaks. In France, you are taxed 33% of everything you do with your company, regardless of how much you are worth and with little or no tax breaks available. So that 2% discrepancy means little when you consider the rest of the differences in those two nations' tax policies.

[skrump]

So Vivendi is evil for taking away 4 months worth of the profits blizz makes from Subscriptions alone.

Can't really say I care to be honest because Blizzard clearly isn't using the bulk of those profits to benefit the games making them the money or even new games for that matter. (guessing the only people getting hurt are shareholders which probably already have money falling out of their pockets)

[Vankrys]

nevertheless, french tax law shouldn't be the focus of this discussion. whatever vivendi decide to do, it would have to be in compliance with international business law,i don't think they are "stealing" money, they just making a withdrawal.

Now as a gamer, i would like to see that money invested to make more games, which is not going to happen. But in the same time, AB was just sitting on it, doing nothing with it, so i don't see the difference.

Maybe it'll give a little squeeze to activision blizzard and force them to actually make high quality product to regain market share. Remember when call of duty was actually revolutionizing the FPS genre, when wow was just wow, when warcraft 3 was a thing.

[Dhrizzle]

They actually tried to sell their 61% stake first but there were no takers. This is plan B.

Actually they engaged in talks with Acti-Blizz about a buy-back but didn't reach any sort of agreement, this isn't plan B but one of many options being explored under a strategic review (it just happens top be a great head-line for gaming sites to get clicks) which likely will not be implemented but could be used as leverage in further talks.

[Shoridayo]

Quick everyone go buy a name change we have to save wow.

This.

The obvious solution to this problem is to simply throw $400 million at ACTI-BLZ and WoW will be saved.

[oblivionx]

heh the worst thing Vivendi could do would be trying to siphon money from their biggest cash cow.

[Ronduwil]

say you bought a few houses, you do expect to earn monthly rent from it right. what if for 5 years, you haven't seen a dime of that money, it goes directly into a bank account. now if you suddenly need cash, wouldn't you withdraw, after all, it's your money.

That's not really how it went down. There were rules in place requiring Vivendi to obtain permission from Activision's board of directors before taking them into debt exceeding 400 million dollars. Those rules expired today. A better analogy would be a CD that matured. This is what happens when large corporations are allowed to acquire any company they want with impunity. They eventually gain control of properties with the intent to drain them dry, not because they provide a strategic business advantage. When was the last time IBM put out a decent product? How have their share prices doubled in the past five years? Shenanigans like this is how. And then people wonder why our economies are failing...

[Crookids]

God, half you people are talking out of your seat coushin.

All this means is by tomorrow, Activision maybe force to buy back the majority of shares since no other corporation is looking to purchase manority hold in the company. But since Viv does not want to get rid of all the shares and want to remain owner, they will most likely sell the 11% back to squeeze money for their own debt and still own 50%. This will put Activision at a deficit, but it's not as big a deal as people are makin it seem and should have zero effect on WoW. As a matter of fact, extra care (such as pulling Titan devs to work on WoW) of their cash cow is likely to occur. That means MORE attention to WoW.

[RicardoZ]

Actually they engaged in talks with Acti-Blizz about a buy-back but didn't reach any sort of agreement, this isn't plan B but one of many options being explored under a strategic review (it just happens top be a great head-line for gaming sites to get clicks) which likely will not be implemented but could be used as leverage in further talks.

So then they have to make the opportunity cost of simply siphoning off the money just a little more expensive than actually having A-B physically buy back their shares. That's a pretty bad strongarm job.

They're basically saying "You can just give us x amount of money and get nothing, or you can give us the larger y amount of money and get your stock back and we're done." That's an almost mafia-like approach to negotiations, it's as bad as Obamacare.

[Schroedinger]

So all true Blizzard fans, time for you for lots of faction and race changes + there is lots of pets in the store to grap. Hush, hush, support your favorite developer.

[Vankrys]

That's not really how it went down. There were rules in place requiring Vivendi to obtain permission from Activision's board of directors before taking them into debt exceeding 400 million dollars. Those rules expired today. A better analogy would be a CD that matured. This is what happens when large corporations are allowed to acquire any company they want with impunity. They eventually gain control of properties with the intent to drain them dry, not because they provide a strategic business advantage. When was the last time IBM put out a decent product? How have their share prices doubled in the past five years? Shenanigans like this is how. And then people wonder why our economies are failing...

using too abstract speech here.

If large corporation acquire company, well, that means company are for sales. Unless i'm wrong, nobody put a gun on either activision or blizzard and force them to sign. In the end, it's often the little guys, with no decision power in the company that get screwed over, but the company head themselves had to agree with it.

Should large corporation disapear and we would go back to a more human, artisanal world. Could we get the same level of technological and social progress in such world. It's easy to side with david against goliath. Always defend the small company against the giant evil corporation.

Like i say, there is always 2 sides on a story.

[Millennía]

So Vivendi is evil for taking away 4 months worth of the profits blizz makes from Subscriptions alone.

Can't really say I care to be honest because Blizzard clearly isn't using the bulk of those profits to benefit the games making them the money or even new games for that matter. (guessing the only people getting hurt are shareholders which probably already have money falling out of their pockets)

Shareholders wouldn't be too hurt since because if Vivendi go the dividend route then all the other shareholders also get paid. Vivendi will just get most of the money because of their 61% stake.

They are also taking a lot more than 4 months worth of subscription cash. They are aiming to take the entire $4.5 billion dollar cash pile and then some.

[Varjo410]

So is there actually something interesting to read here or just another 14 pages of haters claiming Blizzard/WoW is dying, again, for real this time, seriously.

[Crookids]

using too abstract speech here.

If large corporation acquire company, well, that means company are for sales. Unless i'm wrong, nobody put a gun on either activision or blizzard and force them to sign. In the end, it's often the little guys, with no decision power in the company that get screwed over, but the company head themselves had to agree with it.

Should large corporation disapear and we would go back to a more human, artisanal world. Could we get the same level of technological and social progress in such world. It's easy to side with david against goliath. Always defend the small company against the giant evil corporation.

Like i say, there is always 2 sides on a story.

What are you even talking about?