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Video gamer Electronic Arts to be bought in buyout

Electronic Arts, the maker of video games like “Madden NFL,” “Battlefield,” and “The Sims,” is being acquired by an investor group including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund in the largest private equity-funded buyout in history.

The investors, who also include a firm managed by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, valued the deal $55 billion.

EA stockholders will receive $210 per share. The deal far exceeds the $32 billion price tag to take Texas utility TXU private in 2007, which had shattered records for leveraged buyouts.

PIF, which was currently the largest insider stakeholder in Electronic Arts, will be rolling over its existing 9.9% investment in the company.

The commitment to the massive deal is in line with recent activity in the gaming sector by the Saudi fund, wrote Andrew Marok of Raymond James.

“The Saudi PIF has been a very active player in the video gaming market since 2022, taking minority stakes in most scaled public video gaming publishers, and also outright purchases of companies like ESL, FACEIT, and Scopely,” he wrote. “The PIF has made its intentions to scale its gaming arm, Savvy Gaming Group, clear, and the EA deal would represent the biggest such move to date by some distance.”

PIF is also a minority investor in Nintendo.

The deal needs approval from national security regulators on the Committee on Foreign Investment given that the Saudis are involved, but there are plenty of reason to expect it will go through. If the transaction closes as anticipated, it will end EA’s 36-year history as a publicly traded company.

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