Activision Blizzard bought out Vivendi's controlling stake, then sold to Microsoft at $95

The 2008 merger that created Activision Blizzard left France's Vivendi holding a controlling stake — 59.7% of the shares by November 2011, per Vivendi's own Schedule 13D/A. As the French group's debt crisis deepened, that holding became a permanent overhang: investors could never be sure when, or at what price, hundreds of millions of shares would hit the market.

On July 25, 2013 the company announced the exit. Activision Blizzard would buy approximately 429 million shares from Vivendi for $5.83 billion — $13.60 per share — while ASAC II LP, an investor group led by CEO Bobby Kotick and co-chairman Brian Kelly, who committed $100 million of their own money alongside Davis Advisors, Leonard Green & Partners and Tencent, would buy roughly 172 million more for $2.34 billion. Funding was about $1.2 billion of cash plus $4.6 billion of new debt, with more than $3 billion of cash retained. A special committee of independent directors negotiated the terms.

The press release put the thesis in writing before any outcome existed: a capital structure expected to deliver 2013 pro forma EPS accretion of 18–29% on a GAAP basis, Vivendi cut to a passive 12% stake, and an independent company led by Kotick. ASAC II reported its post-deal holdings on a Schedule 13D filed October 21, 2013. Ten years later, on October 13, 2023, Microsoft completed its acquisition at $95.00 per share and the stock was delisted — the shares bought back at $13.60 converted at roughly seven times that price.

Stated and delivered: pro forma 2013 EPS accretion of 18–29% on a GAAP basis; a decade later Microsoft paid $95.00 a share, roughly seven times the $13.60 buyback price

Vivendi's distress made the parent a motivated seller, so a negotiated exit at a fixed $13.60 beat the uncertainty of an auction or an uncontrolled block dump.

The price was set to clear the block, not to be heroic: $13.60 fixed and immediate against an overhang that could have weighed on the stock for years.

Balance-sheet discipline made the leverage safe: $4.6 billion of new debt against more than $3 billion of retained cash, with committed financing from two banks.

Management put $100 million of personal money into ASAC II, aligning the insider buyer with public shareholders rather than against them.

A controlling-stake overhang prices every share below the company's future. Retiring the block at a negotiated price — even on debt — can cost less than years of discount.

Activision Blizzard emerged independent, with Kotick as CEO and Brian Kelly as chairman, and the ASAC II group holding about 24.9% of the shares, more than $3 billion of cash retained. Ten years later, on October 13, 2023, Microsoft completed its acquisition at $95.00 per share in cash — roughly seven times the $13.60 repurchase price — and Activision Blizzard was delisted from Nasdaq. What looked like leverage-fueled bravado in 2013 reads, in hindsight, as the deal that let the company compound for its own shareholders before selling at all.