Warren Buffett believes in Xbox-Activision and throws in more millions
He made a new investment again
The colossal acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Xbox has been at the center of gaming discussions lately, since as we recently informed you , Brazil’s Board of Economic Defense (CADE) has released several official documents containing interesting information. Specifically, in this context we learned about Xbox’s claims that PlayStation is actively trying to put a brake on the further development of Xbox Game Pass, even paying game developers “blocking rights” to never come to the Game Pass subscription service, while PlayStation for his part, he wants to block the takeover, as he believes it will harm competition.
Now another interesting development took place. In more detail, as reported by Reuters , the legendary investor Warren Buffett , who is one of the richest people in the world, believes that the acquisition will get the green light and thus continues to invest millions. More specifically, through Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett again increased his stake in Activision Blizzard, which from 64.3 million shares now stands at 68.4 million. Now the investment is valued at 5.3 billion dollars.
Of course, if the takeover does go through, then Buffett will be considerably richer. At the moment, Activision’s share price is around $80, while Microsoft has agreed to be acquired for $95 per share. This means that Buffett will make at least 15 dollars for each share, since the majority of them were bought at an even lower price, and thus his net profit may exceed 1 billion!
In case you want a refresher on the deal’s timeline, the acquisition was announced on January 18th and is now in the midst of . For the time being, Activision Blizzard’s shareholders have voted in favor and what is pending is for Microsoft to get the approvals of the relevant regulatory authorities, such as the FTC, the corresponding body of the European Union and the United Kingdom.
For the record, Microsoft’s previous colossal acquisition of Bethesda was approved before Lina Khan took control of the FTC. Khan has pledged to be tougher on tech giants, particularly to prevent monopolies from being created. In this context, the FTC intervened, blocking the acquisition of Arm by Nvidia for $40 billion. Therefore, if the deal gets the go-ahead from the said government agency, chances are it won’t run into any other notable hurdles.
It should be noted that in the case of Activision Blizzard we are dealing not only with the largest acquisition in the history of the gaming industry – and indeed by a huge margin -, but also with the largest acquisition in the history of Microsoft in general, since at 68.7 billion dollars, the deal even exceeds the entire gross domestic product of smaller countries.
