I know there was a thread on this yesterday but it got me interested and i decided to run some of the maths involved. Most of the information present is based on my calculations and the last Financial Reports from Sqaure Enix and Microsoft.
Square Enix is made up of just over 110 million shares, which are currently worth about $30 US dollars each by my calculations. This makes Square Enix a $3.3 billion dollar company. Incidentally Microsofts shares currently seel for just under SE's, at around $28 a share. The difference is, Microsoft is made up of more shares, and has a market value of around $261 billion according to Forbes and Microsoft's last annual financial report.
SE's net income was Just under $150 million last financial year, wheras Microsoft's was $12.5 billion, even with the warranty disaster of the 360.
12% of SE is owned by financial institutions, 41% by individuals and 'other' and 24% by foreign (outside of Japan) companies.
Assuming that individuals foreign companies and financial institutions would sell to Microsoft if offered a decent price per share, it is theoretically possible for MS to purchase 77% of SE from these Stockholders alone. It should be noted that Sony (which wouldnt fall into either of the above three categories) owns just under 9% of SE.
SO CAN THEY DO IT???
Financially speaking they can, but purchasing 50.1% of the company would probably cost much more than the $1.65 billion MS would have to spend to meet half SE's market value. IT would probably come close to $1.8 billion or $2 billion to insure that enough investors sold.
Realistically speaking however, I dont think Microsoft would do this, at least not in the next year or two. Its just too much money to justify to MS's own investors when they havent even proven their entertainment division can profit. Hypothetically, if the Xbox 360 started to make money consistently for the next year and SE's market price came down a little, it would become more likely. Some believe that owning SE as a first party would guarantee an MS victory in this generation, making the purchase more than worthwhile, but even if its true its too hard to justify to shareholders at this price point.
What MS COULD DO is purchase enough shares (perhaps 15-20%) to obtain some voting rights, which would enable them to force many exclusives for the PS3 and Wii to go multiplatform. But then, even this could cost almost $800 million, and after Rare didn't do as well as they hoped at $300 million, is it simply just to much to ask?
starcraft - Playing Games = FUN, Talking about Games = SERIOUS
