So all week I've been covering EA's bid for Take-Two at Kotaku. My first piece was a feature on the story so far, with all of its odd little nuances. You may have already heard there was a new development today.
Take-Two's board approved that compensation bump, which includes 780,000 shares of stock, at the annual meeting last night (which I also covered). This effectively dilutes EA's bid to $25.74 a share -- more shares means each is worth less. Some outlets have reported incorrectly that EA "lowered" its bid, when in fact the aggregate amount it's offering is still the same.
So, the management comp package means shareholders will lose money if EA's buying price remains the same -- in other words, they'd get less in the event of the acquisition than they could have. Which makes you wonder, why would the shareholders vote to approve that compensation package? Well, because the people voting are probably not the short-termers who make their living on small percentages of lots of things. Only those who bought stock before February 19th -- that's before EA's bid -- were able to vote in the meeting, because of the time frame in which it was planned.
This morning I talked to a couple of the execs at EA to find out how they feel about it, so check out this story for the very latest! It's quite the real life drama.
