SCi to meet Eidos today as takeover bid gathers pace
Top executives from SCi and Eidos are set to meet this afternoon in London to discuss SCi's bid for its embattled rival, which was given a further boost this morning when another major Eidos shareholder announced its backing.
Top executives from SCi and Eidos are set to meet this afternoon in London to discuss SCi's bid for its embattled rival, which was given a further boost this morning when another major Eidos shareholder announced its backing.
Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey and a number of the firm's directors are expected to travel to SCi's Battersea offices, just minutes away from Eidos' Wimbledon headquarters, to discuss whether they will formally back SCi's bid.
Doing so would reverse their support for a rival bid from Elevation Partners LP, an American private equity firm headed up by former EA president John Riccitiello, which offered 50 pence per share for Eidos last week.
However, that bid appears to be in difficulty regardless, as Elevation plans to take Eidos private and as such, requires 75 per cent support from shareholders to proceed - but even without the board's recommendation, SCi has already garnered almost 22 per cent confirmed support for its offer, which values Eidos more highly but is a pure stock transaction.
In total, SCi has irrevocable undertakings to accept its offer from around 21.42 per cent of Eidos shareholders, after Gartmore Investment Limited added its 1.64 per cent stake to the 19.78 per cent stake committed by Schroder Investments last week.
Eidos executives are expected to question SCi's plans for the company in the event of a successful takeover at this afternoon's meeting, in particular the company's ability to manage a publisher which has five times more staff than it does.
SCi has indicated that it would aggressively restructure Eidos' operations, moving development studios into the wholly owned sub-contractor model which has worked successfully for SCi and Conflict series developer Pivotal Games and removing much of the firm's management overhead.
It also plans to raise some £60 million from a stock offering to manage the takeover, allowing Eidos to spend more time on the games in development and giving the combined group a solid capital base for its restructuring efforts.