Well, a lot of discussion has come from my post yesterday of a source who said Games Workshop is in the midst of a sale. A few clarifications.
1) Games Workshop is a public company traded in the UK on the FTSE. That means it has very different rules and regulations than for companies publicly traded on an American Exchange.
2) Games Workshop is a fairly closely held public company. That means that a few number of shareholders, in their case, institutions, hold the majority of the shares. Tom Kirby, as Chairman and acting CEO, is very tight with each of these institutions, as some are represented on the board, and others are merely just invested for the long haul.
3) If a sale is in the works, the parties would simply need to get the approval of these limited number of shareholders, and then execute the actual sale contract at a later date. There would be no requirement to tell the minor shareholders of the pending sale until a document was executed.
4) In these transactions, typically a binding letter of intent would be put in place, based on the successful execution of the acquiring parties due diligence would be typical.
This is what happened with T-Mobil and AT&T last year, where the sale was conditional upon regulator approval. When that approval was not going to be forthcoming, T-Mobile got a sweet $ 1 billion payment from AT&T for the deal falling through.
I am not familiar with English law, so I do not know when disclosure is required and for what actions by the board of directors. Anyone who knows for a fact, please chime in.
And everyone in experience in business and public companies, has known that something was up for a while. But the last couple weeks there have been so many indications that this is happening. No one thing that you can point to, just a lot of little things. When my source said it is done, I asked him more questions, to which he couldn't supply answers
Also, both BoLS and Faeit212 authors have said something is up. Natfka posted this on the comments of yesterday's article:
"However, you may be on to something regarding the sale. I just received something as well on it. going to go live with it."
And
"Something is going on. A long time source of mine has chimed in."
So we will wait and see.
Loken
10 comments:
It will be interesting to find out what is happening when everything is finished. I wonder how this will end up effecting independent retailers.
Those independents better have good Magic sales because if a sale is pending then this could be cause for more supply problems. I just hope that Apoc and the anticipated Space Marine Codex come out before shut hits the fan.
The largest thing missing from this is WHO would buy GW? You are talking about a company which is perhaps the largest in its niche industry with outstanding shares equaling $347 million dollars+. Surely there isn't a miniatures company that can afford to buy out GW. Which means you are looking at perhaps a major toy company? Hasbro springs to mind (they own WotC). It wouldn't make sense for any of the currently large investors to buy it out since they wouldn't want to manage it.
Rather than a sale, what if GW is going to attempt to go private once again. With a few large institutions holding private equity.
You may want to do some research on point 3. I am fairly certain that as soon as GW is apporached with an offer it needs and announcement (www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/code.pdf)
Something's in the air, but we still haven't seen any actual evidence that this is really happening yet.
Speaking speculatively though, the 'buyer' could be a private capital investment firm, which are all the rage lately. It doesn't have to be Hasbro, or another company that's related to what GW does.
Or it could simply be a big entertainment multinational like Vivendi, that buys up companies like Blizzard, sits on them for a while, and sells them on like trading cards.
Which isn't so bad. When I interviewed there, Blizzard said that Vivendi took their profit checks and left them pretty much alone. The same could easily happen for GW.
GW has noted itself on the investor relations page large shifts in shares. I wouldnt doubt something was going on. On a side note a $347 million + company is hard to call a niche company just because they think or want to think they are. I would go so far as to say that there 40k movie and Dawn of War computer games (yes its relic's) and FF 40k rpg have almost pulled them into the main stream market.
Forge World is a perfect example of a niche company, yes they are part of GW but fit the deffinition better than GW.
Streamlining their products in rapid time, selling licensed products in Walmart, a Wonderfully successful video game available from all major outlets, ditching its specialist games, etc etc etc, it would definetly seem like theyre making themselves a far more lucrative and appetizing company...
You don't want GW to sell to Walmart. As soon as that happen every local gaming store will dump their entire GW line and dump their gaming tables. Why provide the tables only to be undercut by wallymart who provides nothing for the gaming community. You buy at Walmart and play at your local gaming store....not going to happen
Who doesn't have some issues with what GW has been doing here lately. Is it that big a deal?Is the sky failing? I believe the gamer crowd can survive w/o GW.In fact I believe that at the moment GW is hurting the over all hobby. Yes it would have been nice to go main stream ,but with GW's prices I don't see that as being realistic. maybe the hobby needs GW to be not so dominant.
I bought my Space marine Blue ray from walmart in December 2012. they will not be selling plastic models.
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