The information came from the American financial magazine Bloomberg : the Guillemot family, which controls the video game publisher Ubisoft, and the Chinese giant Tencent “have spoken with advisors to explore ways to stabilize Ubisoft and increase its value” according to “sources who asked not to be identified”. Concretely, “one of the possibilities considered would involve joining forces to delist the company from the stock market”. In other words, with the financial support of the Chinese giant, the Guillemot family, and in particular Yves Guillemot, chairman of the board of directors of Ubisoft, could buy back the company’s shares so that it is no longer listed. Tencent would therefore become a little more than a privileged partner, especially since the Chinese company already directly owns 9.2% of the capital of Ubisoft and 49.9% of the Guillemot family holding company which controls the publisher of video games.
In any case, the announcement caused the share price to jump by around 30%, the largest daily increase since the company was listed.
And it was precisely just before this spectacular increase that Nicolas Chéron, independent stock market strategist, spotted an activity that he considered unusual, as he recounted on X (formerly Twitter). Supported by screenshots of the Prorealtime platform, which allows you to follow the financial markets live.
“What happened is pretty crazy: at 2:57 p.m., about 45 minutes before the article was posted online. Bloombergthere were around 225,000 Ubisoft titles traded in less than a minute, he explains to CheckNews. Someone bought all the orders at the sale, at once. In total, that’s 2.4 million. And as these 200,000 titles passed in around thirty seconds, there is a very high probability that it was a single order and a single person behind it.”
However, according to him, “on such an action, there is never such a powerful volume in session”, because buying so much and so quickly automatically increases the average purchase price : “No one buys 200,000 Ubisoft shares all at once in thirty seconds, whatever the price. It never happens. What is the point for a buyer who wants to accumulate to buy everything at once? So he could enter gradually.” Faced with these buy orders, the value of the stock increased rapidly, with an increase of 9%. But as this buying pressure did not last, the stock ultimately returned to its initial price within a few minutes. Contacted, several financial market specialists confirm that such a sudden purchasing volume on a stock like Ubisoft is unusual.
And this massive and sudden purchase, whatever the price, is all the more surprising since before Friday October 4, the title was in a real “infernal spiral”, as detailed the Echoes : he had lost “more than half of its value since the start of the year, but above all 80% over three years and almost 90% over five years”. In question, several commercial disappointments in recent years, and the announcement of the postponement of the release of the next Assassin’s Creed, flagship franchise of the publisher.
Then, at 3:45 p.m., everything came to a head: the information published by Bloomberg lead to a large number of purchase orders and a surge in the price. “We have no way of knowing if the person [qui a acheté 45 minutes avant] has since sold or not, continues this stock market specialist. If she has information about a sale, she’ll probably keep them warm. She can easily resell at +50%, or a million euros pocketed.”
Abnormality and proximity
A situation which could hide insider trading, an offense which consists of using confidential information to make gains (or avoid losses) on the markets.
“There are two criteria that will make us suspect insider trading: abnormality and proximity. The first criterion consists of observing an abnormal transaction compared to the transactions of previous days, particularly in terms of volume. The second is to see if there is a proximity between this operation and an important announcement. explains to CheckNews Yamina Tadjeddine, professor of economics at the University of Lorraine. According to her, there is therefore every chance that an investigation will be opened in the case of Ubisoft. “The investigation time can then be quite long. It’s about finding the person(s) involved, then possibly establishing a link between them with a third person who had access to information.”
“If it’s insider trading, whoever did it was a little clumsy, judge Nicolas Chéron. It makes you think of someone who has the information at Ubisoft or Tencent, someone “close to the file” as they say, and who buys himself or asks someone else to buy. It would be very interesting if the Financial Markets Authority asked [la place boursière] Euronext which purchased 200,000 shares just before the publication of Bloomberg.”
Contacted, the Financial Markets Authority (AMF), which ensures “proper functioning of markets”, only indicates “do not comment on specific listed companies”. A source close to the matter specifies for its part that the AMF is always more “vigilant” In “periods of high activity or big news on a stock” and that the opening of an investigation is never the subject of a public announcement.
Note that Ubisoft has already experienced a case of insider trading in recent years: three managers of the company were convicted in 2016 for having sold titles, in 2013, just before the announcement of the postponement of a game major.
CheckNews will update this article following future developments.
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