It sounds as if Gamigo, which is best known to modern MMORPG players for buying out Trion back in 2018, is going through some corporate transitions of its own.
Eagled-eyed players on the official RIFT forums dug up a couple of press releases from the last few weeks that suggest the German MMO company’s chief shareholder has been increasing its stake in the company, from 53% to almost everything.
A press release from February announced that Media and Games Invest had acquired an additional 1.05M Gamigo shares, bringing its stake to 98%. Yesterday’s more recent release says MGI’s “acquisition of gamigo AG [was] successfully completed” and its share in the company was now 99.9%. That’s brought about a change in the board of directors as well. As for that last one percent? “If the negotiations on the purchase of the remaining 0.1% of gamigo shares fail, a squeeze-out of these shareholders will be aimed for.”
Gamigo CEO – and MGI boss – Remco Westermann issued a statement that appears to be a parody of a business statement, but no, it’s real.
“With the complete acquisition of gamigo, MGI’s participation in gamigo’s rapidly growing profitability will almost double. The very advantageous conditions create additional value for each MGI share from day one. And last but not least, the integration will enable us to fully leverage the synergies between the companies in our group. We will simplify our structure and be able to operate even more efficiently.”
Next they’ll be exercising their core competencies to shift the paradigm.
well dang, the headline gave me a glimmer of hope that Atlas Reactor might be coming back but now I don’t think so :(
Guessing we’ll soon be saying goodbye to the games that aren’t deemed profitable enough.
Get ready for lay offs
“And last but not least, the integration will enable us to fully leverage the synergies between the companies in our group. We will simplify our structure and be able to operate even more efficiently.”
This is the statement that prefaces pretty much every “rightsizing” in corporate history. I”d be nervous if I worked for either company.
/em has flashbacks of MBA courses…..
As my GW2 Asura engineer says: “Such synergy!”
Cross-brand synergy! Leveraging multiple unique verticals to enhance market penetration!
Marketing. MARketing. MARKETING!
Kinda sad that they don’t seem to focus more on trans-media synnergy.
Well all I can say to people who still play games published by gamigo recently acquired from trion is good luck . I’m talking to you rift and archage.
If I understand the situation correctly, they want to be able to completely cease publishing internal information about Gamigo by changing it from a publicly owned company into a fully owned subsidiary.
BTW,
This makes sense yep.
Even to that, I have to wonder why? Seems like a very expensive way to limit your reporting requirements, and absorbs a great deal of financial risk to do it.
The optimistic side of me hopes that they’re doing it so they can take on a significant capital investment (new game/platform) without having to justify the balance sheet hit for years.
The cynical side of me wonders if there isn’t some regulation (e.g. data privacy) that they’re trying to avoid that is more onerous for public companies than private.