Largest Take-Two shareholders slash stakes in company

As lawsuit demands right to elect company directors

Publisher Take-Two is feeling the wrath of its shareholders as its two biggest owners of stock have massively reduced their stakes in the company, while a shareholder lawsuit has demanded that stockholders have the right to elect directors at the company's annual meeting.

The publisher's largest shareholder Oppenheimer Funds has halved its stake in the company from 23 per cent to 11.5 per cent, or 8.8 million shares, reports Reuters.

FMR LLC, the Grand Theft Auto publisher's second largest owner of stock, has also slashed its stake from 14 per cent to 2.75 per cent, in a move that could undermine Take-Two's assertion that Electronic Arts' USD 2 billion acquisition offer for the company was too low.

Following Take-Two's refusal to discuss EA's offer and then arranging a large payout for company executives should the publisher be acquired, a shareholder lawsuit in a Delaware court has accused Take-Two of "breaches of fiduciary duty."

The lawsuit demands the rights for shareholders to nominate and elect directors at Take-Two's 2008 annual meeting.

Take-Two is due to report its earnings for the first quarter on Tuesday March 11. Yesterday, the company detailed severance plans for employees should the acquisition by Electronic Arts go ahead.

EA say if they do takeover T2 that they wont touch the company or the games.....i say there full of **** EA are known for takin over companys rippin them apart and then takin the games that started out good and absolutly killing them....just to make some money.....for example look at commmand and conquer and westwood studios.....EA have killed both.

EA buying BioWare/Pandemic for $860M
[UPDATE] Superdeveloper scooped up by megapublisher for a staggering sum, deal to close in January; deal covers 10 IPs, including Mass Effect, Mercenaries, and unnamed Wii and DS games.

right i dont no if this is just me but dont you think EA are gettin extremely gready? buyin up smaller companys like its nobody's business and spendin millions as if its pocket money :S and if there gonna buy places out shouldnt they atleast continue to keep there games as good as they was before ea bought em out? cos in my opinion when ea bought Westwood studios out it was the mommeny command and conquer died the last GOOD c&c game was red alert 2 and its expansion yuris revenge after that all the c&c games started to suck....if ea are gonna wipe out a company they could atleast keep there legacy goin by makin there games brilliant rather than killing em....

Dave

woke up this mornin n decided to do another blog.......cos i have nothing better to do really :p so........anyway what games are people lookin forward to in the next 6 months or so? myself im REALLLLLLLY lookin forward to GTAIV and MGS4 but there are also a few other games i wouldnt mind playin might not be lookin forward to em as much but hey gotta give em a try n find out if there any good or not right?

Dave

IM ME :D i love games played em since i was 4years old when i first played henry's house on the atari was a well fun game :D. cant beat chillin out n playin a really good game with some ace gfx awsome gameplay and a great storyline :D i CANNOT WAIT for GTAIV :D ive preorderd it i preorderd it about a week before rockstar announced there changin the date i was well gutted n heart broken when they did means i have to wait even longer to play a game that looks absolutly feckin AWSOME it looks the dogs cats brothers sisters donkeys nads it looks so sexual plus i no for a fact rockstar havent dissapointed me with a gta game so far and i dont suspect there goin to start now!! woooooo

Dave

i read about this crap on msn's home page today and decided to say what i thought...so i did :)

"This is pathetic they only blame because there an easy target, FILMS are just as bad when it comes to violence drugs and whatever else you moaning people want topick at, why waste time blaming video games? why not blame the people actually committing the crimes rather than giving them an excuse to try and get a lighter sentence or possibly get away with it because that's all your doing. "oh no i killed somebody" "oh i no ill blame video games people will feel sorry for me then" its pathetic to be honest video games DO NOT cause violence if anything you could say they help get rid of violence in a way of letting the player act the violence out in a game or would you rather they act it out on a person for god sake?"