Ubisoft continue to fight Vivendi takeover by appointing new board members

Ubisoft has continued a trend of appointing new independent ‘directors’ who have no financial stake in the company.

The move echoes a similar one from last year where indpenedent board members were appointed to bring expertise to the company, and to stop media giant Vivendi from buying out these board members and gaining control of the company.

This year, Corinne Fernandez-Handelsman and Virginie Haas have joined the board. This means that Ubisoft are on track of having a majority independent board set up. Of the eleven members, five of them are also women.

According to the press release, the reasons for these particular appointments are to help Ubisoft gain more experience in some of the technological areas of gaming, including cloud computing and handling of big data, as well as recruitment.

Fernandez-Handelsman comes from the recruitment side having working in digital recruitment, marketing and account management for over 30 years. Haas has spent most of her 30 years experience at IBM, where she has held various senior operations and sales roles around cloud computing.

"“We are delighted to continue the expansion of our Board of Directors with the nominations of Corinne and Virginie as independent directors," said Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot. "If their appointments are approved by our shareholders at the next general meeting, our Board will have an independent majority, and nearly half of the directors will be women.

"This development reflects our desire to comply with the best corporate governance practices for the benefit of all our shareholders, while also combining the necessary expertise and competencies for Ubisoft’s long-term success. At a time when the Group’s model is transforming, Corinne and Virginie will add valuable and leading-edge expertise to the Board."