New Shareholders to Weigh Take-Two Bid

By MATT RICHTEL

Published: March 14, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO — Electronic Arts, which on Thursday began a direct tender offer to shareholders of Take-Two Interactive, finds itself negotiating with a group of shareholders much different from what it would have faced a month ago, when it first proposed a takeover.

Since then there has been a considerable turnover in ownership of Take-Two. Gone are many long-term shareholders, who have given way to a group of investors willing to risk that the buyout will provide quick profit.

This turnabout has laid the groundwork for a narrative that will play out over the next 20 days involving two of the biggest companies in the video game industry.

Electronic Arts announced last month that it would pay $2 billion for Take-Two, an offer the company’s management rejected. The offer amounts to $26 a share, a 50 percent premium over the stock’s closing price of $17.13 on Feb. 22.

Many Take-Two shareholders have sold shares to investors looking to profit in a buyout. But that does not mean the short-term investors will be satisfied with Electronic Arts’ current offer. Some say these investors are gambling that they can force Electronic Arts to raise its bid a few more dollars per share.

John Riccitiello, the chief executive of Electronic Arts, said he thought some of these investors could become nervous if they thought Electronic Arts would walk away if pressed too hard.

“Some might hold out for $1 or $2,” he said in an interview on Thursday. But they “might be more scared of losing $7 or $8 if our offer goes away.”

That perspective differs from what some of the short-term investors, commonly called arbitrage investors, are saying. One such investor, who declined to be identified citing his company’s policy against commenting publicly, said that he believed that institutions with small short-term stakes could band together to push Electronic Arts to raise its offer at least a few dollars.

The short-term investor said that he believed a representative from Electronic Arts has told Wall Street investors that the company is loath to walk away from the deal, giving the arbitrageurs hope the company could be pressured to raise its price.

Take-Two’s management has said it will not negotiate any deal until after April 29, the day it releases Grand Theft Auto IV, the next iteration of its hit video game franchise.

Take-Two declined to comment on the hostile takeover effort. In a news release, the company said its directors would take 10 days to consider the proposal.

The tender offer lasts 20 business days, ending on April 11. At that point, Electronic Arts could extend the offer.

For his part, Mr. Riccitiello said that his company cannot afford to wait to negotiate until the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. He said Electronic Arts must subsume Take-Two in time to get the full benefit of its assets by the all-important year-end holiday sales season.

Since Electronic Arts first made public its interest in acquiring Take-Two there has been unusually high trading volume in the company’s shares. Among the heavy traders, funds at Oppenheimer have sold 8.8 million shares, about half what they owned previously. Some Fidelity funds have sold 8.2 million shares, leaving it with a relatively paltry 2 million shares.

Fidelity declined to comment, citing a policy against commenting on individual securities. Oppenheimer did not respond to a request for comment.

Evan Wilson, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, said that Electronic Arts’ decision to go hostile could cause it some problems with Take-Two’s creative teams. He said that game development studios, like Rockstar Games, which makes Grand Theft Auto, may not stick around to work for Electronic Arts.

Mr. Riccitiello said he had not spoken to the Rockstar team about the takeover effort, but he said he could make a strong case to them that Electronic Arts offers them a stable company that can deliver their games to a broader audience.

“We, in many ways, represent a white knight.” he said.

sumber: nytime.com

A mouse needs a pad

In past columns I’ve told you how to do without the mouse (missed the columns? Email me and I’ll send you them). Here am I going to tell you about the opposite: Using the mouse more.

Why, you may ask, might it be good to use the mouse more when you clearly told us it was better to use the keyboard? Good question.

Well, it’s about productivity. We use computers for lots of things — as glorified typewriters (we used to call our computers “word processors”, to give you an idea of what they were originally intended for), but then, gradually, computers got more powerful and the interface became more graphically oriented for lots of fancier things.

There are some things that a keyboard makes sense for. If you’re writing, you don’t want to keep moving your hand away from the keyboard to move the mouse. In which case, keyboard shortcuts make a lot of sense. But try browsing the Internet using only the keyboard and you’ll find you’re stuck on the same page. Find yourself sorting through digital photos, or touching them up, or organizing songs in your MP3 collection, and you’ll probably agree that a mouse makes more sense. So here are some tips about using your mouse better when you do need to use it.

First off, get a decent mouse. Unless you’re an expert (and I’ve not met any yet), I would recommend using a mouse more than the trackpad (the little flat surface on your laptop) or TrackPoint (the little nubbin that is sometimes in the middle of your laptop keyboard). This is just because I think the mouse is better and faster at doing these things. But make sure it’s a decent mouse and not the cheapest one in the shop (even if it does have Garfield’s face on it and little whiskers sprouting out of the top).

Things to look for in a mouse: Size and shape; does it feel right in your hand? The scroll wheel (the little wheel in the middle of most mice), which is great for moving up and down documents without having to move the cursor to the edge of the screen to click on the up and down arrows.

If you can, buy a wireless mouse. These are ones that either use Bluetooth or other radio technology so there’s no cables connecting the mouse and computer.

Why is this worth doing? Because the cable often gets tangled, or it restricts your movement. A mouse should be free to roam across the desktop, so it’s worth paying that little bit extra.

But the mouse should have a pad. Once again, don’t scrimp, or — as many do — go without. A mouse should move smoothly around the surface it’s on. Most mice nowadays use a sort of laser to move the cursor around (it used to be a little ball), so they are much more sensitive to movement. Sadly, most mouse pads haven’t really caught up with this, and are made of material that’s a bit too heavy to get the best out of the mouse. I personally recommend a mouse pad designed for gamers (those people who play computer games for a living and really need accurate and responsive mice) made by a company called S&S (http://www.steelseries.com/). You know a mouse pad company is serious when it issues each pad with its own swanky bag and charges more than US$50 for it.

It’s basically a slab of very thin plastic with a slightly indented surface, and the mouse moves around on it like a dream — not too fast, not too slow. For an even smoother ride I found some little, well, pads, that you can stick on the bottom of the mouse. This may sound geeky, but you’ll notice the difference immediately.

One final tip: You can change the sensitivity settings of your mouse, which allows you to control the speed with which the cursor moves across the screen in response to you moving the mouse itself.

If it all sounds a bit geeky, my apologies. You probably don’t need to go quite as far as I have. But the truth is that unless you’re still using Word*Star or a typewriter, you use the mouse a lot, and you owe it to yourself to make sure you have the best.

Don’t forget the rookie’s mistake: Not putting your mouse pad somewhere ergonomic. Many offices I’ve visited have the poor drones working on those desks where the keyboard is on a tray well below the optimal height, and the mouse pad either above them on the desk or else perched on a tiny little platform way off to one side.

Your keyboard should be where your elbows hang from your side, and the mouse pad should be right alongside your keyboard, touching it. You should, in short, be able to reach the mouse simply by moving your hand six inches to the right (or left.) If your layout’s not like this, scream at your boss until it is. It’s your hands and arms that are going to pay for it, not his/hers, so you need to look after yourself.

Next week I’ll offer some tips on how to use the mouse in ways that may surprise you. That gives you a week to get a good mouse and give it a decent pad to hang out on.

Jeremy Wagstaff writes for The Wall Street Journal Asia and the BBC World Service. His guide to technology, “Loose Wire”, is available in bookshops or on Amazon. He can be found online at jeremywagstaff.com or via email at jeremy@loose-wire.com.