July 2007 – July 2008: Activision and Blizzard merge in an 18 billion $ deal into Activision Blizzard, with Activision as the dominant partner. They get to appoint “Robert A. Kotick” as the new CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of the Holding company while Vivendi remains majority shareholder with 52%.
Notice, that while it might be true that Blizzard gets to remain “independent” in decisions as how to make their games or put together their teams etc., they both now share and have to please the same stakeholders, investors and have to ultimately answer to the same Board of Directors and Corporate Management.
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