This isn’t entirely correct. MS is making a deal with Activision, but it is for all of the shares currently on the market, not some special “internal” stock issue to MS. If MS isn’t buying this shares from the current owners, then MS can’t own 100% of the outstanding shares, and they would have only partial control, with the current shareholders still maintaining their investments and having some control. You’d still see Activision shares on the market that could be purchased. What you are describing is an issue of new stock, not the purchase of a company. But that is not what is happening.
In addition, if MS wasn’t acquiring those shares from the current owners, there would be no reason (for the most part) for the price of this shares to increase in response to the deal. The current shareholders would see nothing of the increased price being paid by MS. However, since MS is indeed buying all of the current outstanding shares, over time the market price will move closer to the offering price as the purchase becomes more probable.
Under corporate law, as long as a majority (usually) or whatever percentage is required by the articles of incorporation of the shareholders to approve of the sale, even those shareholders that don’t want to sell can be forced to sell.
I think the biggest risk is that Microsoft estimated the price in a record strong market. The Fed is tightening monetary policy all this year, and market prices will decline. If they decline enough Microsoft may decide it is worth it to abandon the deal, pay the penalty, and buy at a much lower prevailing market price.
A record strong market overall but for a company that saw its price go down significantly at the same time. Microsoft basically got a 40% discount on the purchase thanks to the lawsuit.
I would be very careful extrapolating a stock price to mean something in the middle of a 12 to 15% market correction.
IMO there is a little hesitancy with any deal this large. This particular one comes with one company in the midst of some serious bad mojo. I think and am banking on the price going even lower over the next 6 months at which point I will buy in. Im not worried about the deal not happening I’m worried about more bad press and market correction dropping the price and missing out on a better deal. I suspect I’m not alone.
‘A manner of speaking’ actually means ‘I wrote whatever first thing I thought associated to having several game publishers in one image’.
In any case that second image is just a curiosity, because if you look at it, you will see an incredible lack of consistency, like Rockstar studios are put individually, even if they all mostly contribute to one game, while the two Arkane studios, which are in two different continents and usually does different games (Prey vs Dishonored 2, for example) only have 1 icon.
inXile has always been small (I mean, Wasteland was never AAA material), Double Fine has needed ages to do Psychonauts 2, while Obsidian had time to grow to do their AAA pretensions since MS acquisition.
That’s what I was curious about—if Obsidian were always that much bigger or if Microsoft expanded them afterward—because it certainly felt like Obsidian were peers of inXile in terms of scope and scale in the Wasteland 2/Pillars 1 days. Granted that was over half a decade ago.
