The battle for ownership of Ubisoft continued to rage on yesterday as the Guillemot family acquired a further four million shares worth 144 million euros, increasing its stake in the games maker by 3.5 percent.

As of July the Guillemot family held only nine percent of the firm and 15 percent of the voting rights.

The move from the Guillemot Brothers SE is the result of ongoing hostile takeover by Vivendi SA (former owners of Activision) which started earlier this year. Since then the Guillemot’s have been attempting to raise capital within the family, as well as from various Canadian investors in order to maintain Ubisoft’s independence. At the moment, Vivendi owns just over 20 percent of the publisher.

Vivendi has already previously successfully taken over one of the Guillemot businesses: Gameloft.

“We are seeing a race between Vivendi and Guillemot brothers,” Charles-Louis Planade, head of research at Louis Capital Markets – Midcap Partners said.

“If Vivendi wants Ubisoft, it will have to pay for it.”

A Ubisoft shareholder meeting is scheduled for September 29th, where the Guillemots will supposedly be lobbying other shareholders for support with the promise of better returns should the business remain independent.

Neither party has provided a recent comment.

My Opinion:

Drama like this is quite rare for the industry, and personally I’m #GuillemotBrothers. Why? Because I saw what Vivendi did with Activision.

---

Tyler Fischer is a Senior Writer for MONG who plays video games when he’s not busy researching alien conspiracy theories at 2AM. You can find him on Twitter.