Acquisitions

FIFA, Need for Speed, Sim City or The Sims, that are the names of the most popular games produced by Electronic Arts, famous American game developing company. Celebrating their 25th anniversary this year, EA has signed the deal of their history. For two software studios they will exchange $ 860 millions. EA is the world number one in producing videogames. In other field of game pop culture, such as role playing, action and adventure games, they are not so enlarged. By this move of acquiring two new studios, which are specializing in this sphere, everything will be different. Since the two new studios, BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios, are developing ten games, EA will occupy a strong competitive position. The acquisition will close in January. By this time EA will pay to Elevation Partners, which was the former owner, $ 620 million in cash. Another part of the money will come in form of equity to some of the company's employees. The largest financial transaction before this deal was in 2006, when the EA bought a mobile games publisher Jamdat Mobile Inc. for $ 680 million. Current revenue of EA in 2006 was $ 2.951 billion. The employ 7,200 people worldwide, with the two new studios it will be 8,000. This new deal will affect the position of EA on stock market, but the company is already counting on it. They expect in 2008 they will earn up to 40 cents less per share. But until they will produce games that will be so highly saleable as now, the shares will grow again.

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by Nina Gotzmannova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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