It’s no secret that Electronic Arts has been courting possible buyers for its business for a while now. Back in May we heard that Disney, Apple, and Amazon had all been having conversations with the EA board.
Early this morning, citing the proverbial “unnamed sources”, the rumour that Amazon would be making a formal bid to buyout EA broke. EA’s share price spiked up over 5% within hours of trade opening. And then the denials started rolling in.
CNBC reported that Amazon will not be making a bid for EA.
Pointedly, the phrase “will not be making a bid today” was heard to be used.
It’s worth saying that, while some may have jumped the gun, the acquisition rumours involving EA have been increasingly persistent in recent times, with its CEO recently having to reassure shareholders that there were no such plans. That’s suit talk, of course, because deals on this scale don’t tend to leak: Microsoft’s offer for Activision for an incomprehensible $68.7 billion came out of nowhere.
It’s becoming clear that there’s something happening in the boardrooms of a number of these companies. It’s midday in New York, 9 AM in Los Angeles. Still a lot of time left in the day for things to happen. (But, like MS, I think Amazon will only make an official announcement just before the start of trade on Monday.)
