EA shareholders approve $55 billion buyout

It has been almost three months since EA's Board of Directors announced that it had received a $55B buyout offer. Last night, EA took the next step towards closing the deal, with shareholders officially voting to approve the buyout.

As first spotted by Stephen Totilo, EA's shareholders have now voted in favour of the acquisition proposal. Now, the next step will be getting the acquisition approved by government regulators, which depending on the level of scrutiny, can either take several months, or years. A recent example of this taking longer than expected was the Microsoft – Activision merger, with the deal's agreed upon closing date having to be extended a couple of times due to continued meetings with regulators.

The EA deal will see a consortium of private investors banding together to pay out $55 billion to shareholders in exchange for 100% control over the company. Once the deal is completed, EA will no longer be a publicly traded company and it will be delisted from the stock exchange. This also means that things like earning reports don't have to be publicly published.

The buyout is expected to be completed before the end of 2026.

KitGuru Says: There will be a lot of debt accrued with this deal, so there will no doubt be some major changes at EA once the dust settles here. Expect more multiplayer, more microtransactions and fewer true single-player projects

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