Electronic Arts stockholders approve buyout by investor group on Dec 22, 2025, 201.5 million votes to 1.9 million

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, from public records. Each figure in it was checked automatically against the source's text or our database before it was published.

Electronic Arts stockholders approved the merger agreement at a special meeting on Dec 22, 2025, with 201,459,396 shares voting for and 1,915,837 against, while 90,331 abstained. The buyer is an investor consortium of The Public Investment Fund, private investment funds affiliated with Silver Lake Group and private investment funds affiliated with Affinity Partners. There were 250,106,129 shares entitled to vote as of the record date. Electronic Arts reported the result in an 8-K, the current report public companies file with the SEC, under item 5.07, which covers votes of shareholders, filed on Dec 23, 2025.1^,2^,3^,4^,5^,6^,7

Stockholders also approved a second proposal, on an advisory, non-binding basis, on compensation that may be paid to the company's named executive officers in connection with the deal. It passed with 178,302,365 shares for, 24,908,638 against and 254,561 abstaining. No proposal to adjourn the meeting was made, because there were sufficient votes to approve the merger agreement.8^,9^,10

The merger agreement is dated Sep 28, 2025, and the announcement of it said stockholders would receive $210 a share in cash. The proxy statement puts the premium at 24.8% over the closing price per share on Sep 25, 2025, the last full trading day before published market speculation about a sale. An announcement filed on Sep 29, 2025 values the company at an enterprise value of approximately $55 billion, the value of its shares plus its debt, less its cash.2^,11^,12^,13^,14

The deal was set out in a definitive proxy statement filed on Nov 20, 2025, ahead of the vote. It was completed later: on Aug 4, 2026, Electronic Arts issued a press release announcing completion of the merger, and an 8-K filed that day says the company became a wholly owned subsidiary of the buyers' acquisition vehicle. That 8-K states the total consideration payable at approximately $55 billion, a total-funds figure and not the amount paid to stockholders.15^,16^,17^,18^,19

Electronic Arts publishes Battlefield 6 (developed by EA DICE, Criterion Games, Motive Studio and Ripple Effect Studios), Apex Legends (Respawn Entertainment), EA Sports FC 26 (EA Romania and EA Vancouver) and The Sims 4 (Maxis).20^,21^,22^,23

Our records hold the text of 6 documents of this deal, and a filing older than the collector's window is not stored, so a deal's early steps may be missing from them.24