Viacom Acquiring Midway Soon?

Sumner Redstone, chairman and CEO of media giant Viacom, appears to want Midway Games rather badly. Redstone, who commonly owns 72.4% of Midway's stock, has filed a notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission announcing his retaining of a financial advisor, with an organ of vision towards the likelihood of increasing his stake in midway to an flat more substantial 80%.

Redstone one time owned only 30% of Midway, on the other hand he's been on quite the buying drinking-bout since the turn of the year, rapidly increasing his stake in the company. His interest in the stock has helped quadruple its price, from around $3 last fall to more than $12 this week. In his latest stir he announced plans to acquire 125 million shares of Midway stock from long-time Midway chairman Neil D Nicastro earlier this week. Nicastro will resign his position shortly.

Meanwhile, Midway also plans to shrink the size of its board of directors at Redstone's behest, according to several source. The board will before long consist of eight members, rather than 11 and Redstone has nominated his daughter to take above one of those seats. the one and the other moves would allow Redstone to exercise more sway over decision-making at the top of Midway.

What would Redstone do with Midway? The rife scenario proposed by many analysts is that he would take it private and barter it to Viacom. granting Midway has been on the skids financially and creatively for the past four years, it's pulling itself back upon track with a string of novel successes, and incorporating the publisher into Viacom would give the conglomerate a toehold in the videogame business.

Viacom's interactive division was one time involved in console game publishing, releasing games for 16- and 32-bit cheers in the mid-'80s, but it bowed without of the space some years ago, choosing instead to focus upon developing games and content for the Internet.

The company's catalog of properties include a great many that could be readily exploited in videogames, however -- the Nickelodeon TV network, the Paramount movie studio's back catalog, MTV and others. Redstone may be interested in following the lead of companies like the Warner Bro movie studio, which has lately chosen to take a more active character in the development and publishing of games based upon its properties.

Recently rumor had it that Redstone had an smooth bigger target in his sights, with a certain quantity of reports suggesting that Viacom was interested in acquiring Electronic Arts. However, he flatly denied similar speculation late last week.

Copyright ?© 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserv Originally appearing in 1UP