Shanda Games going back to private ownership

@(Unverified)

It can be/either or. But it does not look bad.

I am only speculating as to the motives here, but I have a feeling that this move is a bit of a consolidation to gain ownership back.

There are many reasons one starts a company and then "goes public" with their IPO and they can be varied, but one reason is to gain an influx of more money, since other people buy shares in your company. Of course, since they buy shares, they have some say/control over what you do and they probably get some sort of dividends (but not always) in stock payouts.

I am guessing this family (since the column points to the son and wife being in positions of power) just wants to take back ownership of the company and ultimately keep more of the profits/money. That's a bit stereotypical for me to think that, but that was my first reaction. Of course, there is consolidation of power (not listening to other stockholder's opinions and doing what you feel is necessary) to consider, too.There are other examples of stock being bought back by the original owners(s) because of that. The inverse of that is that a stranger could conceivably buy-out or get the majority of the stock, locking other voices out, including the original owners (They'd have to own the most stock); some companies are bought out this way.

In short, to me, this seems like consolidating power back to the original owner. The initial IPO offering was probably a way to drum up some extra cash and now they have made profits and just want to take the company back. It will most likely still have shares, but that's only a problem if someone in the family decides to sell their shares for cash at a future date and give an outsider an "in" to having a share of the company.

@(Unverified) I'm not familiar with this specific game, nor am I an MBA. But I personally think it's better for game companies to be private. Just look at Valve. To the best of my knowledge Valve has never released a crappy game. They've released some ok games, but never crappy ones. That's because Valve is a private company so they don't have to waste time pleasing annoying shareholders. Which means they can spend more time on actually creating the game and making sure that it's actually good before they actually release it.