Electronic Arts $55bn buyout is biggest ever

Jared Kushner's private equity firm and Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund are some of the investors teaming up to take the video game giant private, write Lauren Hirsch and Matthew Goldstein from New York

- 

Visitors play the EA Sports FC 25 game at the Electronic Arts booth at the Gamescom trade fair in Cologne, Germany, in 2024.

(AFP)

Video game publisher Electronic Arts announced Monday that it agreed to be taken private in a deal valued at roughly $55 billion by a group of investors that includes a firm managed by President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.

The deal would pay stockholders $210 per share in cash, a 25% premium to the company's share price before news of the deal leaked.

If completed, it would be the largest buyout of a publicly traded company to date, not adjusting for inflation. The investors would partly finance the deal with a $20 billion loan from JPMorgan Chase.

The deal is led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which already owns about 10% of Electronic Arts, as well as private equity firm Silver Lake and Kushner's Affinity Partners.

The move is the latest effort by the Saudi fund to advance into gaming as it looks to diversify its investments away from oil. In 2021, the fund created the Savvy Games Group to spearhead a planned $38 billion investment in the industry. Riyadh, the Saudi capital, hosted the Esports World Cup this summer, a video game tournament with $70 million in prize money.