On Friday, Square Enix announced their intent to purchase a majority stake in Tecmo, giving the floundering Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive publisher until September 4th to approve or reject an offer of 920 yen per share, a 30% premium over their stock’s trading value at that time. Today, Reuters reports that Tecmo has rejected Square Enix’s proposal… in favor of merger talks with Dynasty Warriors publisher Koei.
In a rather telling joint statement released today, Tecmo and Koei said that “Through a merger, we expect we can grow further by respecting both companies’ identities and having an environment in which employees can fully exhibit their skills.” Square Enix president Yoichi Wada had suggested last week that if they were to take over Tecmo, the latter company’s brand name might be lost.
Kotaku has a second roughly translated statement from Tecmo, which specifically mentions the Tecmo brand as a point of contention.
Details of the Tecmo-Koei merger have not yet been revealed, but Reuters notes that Tecmo’s stock jumped 7.5% during the Japanese business day following the announcement. Of course, that could also have something to do with Tecmo’s announcement that Team Ninja is alive and well, headed by Jin Hasegawa and has three new titles, but we’re not economists and will suggest nothing of the sort.
Though we had thought the chances of us reporting on a renewed takeover attempt by Square Enix would be slim — the company had declared Friday that if Square Enix’s friendly offer were rejected, they would withdraw their proposal — a Square Enix spokesperson told Reuters that the company would be actively evaluating the reasons behind Tecmo’s decision.
Image credit: Monty Oum
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