When the dust settles on the $55 billion leveraged buyout of Electronic Arts, Saudi Arabia will be its only true owner. Despite a “consortium” of investors being involved in the deal, including President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the Public Investment Fund will control 93 percent of the company, according to filings with Brazil’s antitrust regulator.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, this is the reverse of what you might usually expect for one of these deals where a sovereign wealth fund is one of the smaller players in a buyout led by private equity. After all, what does Saudi Arabia know about running the biggest video game publisher in the United States?
The stakes of the other partners, Silver Lake and Affinity, are set to be 5.5 percent and 1.1 percent, respectively. It’s unclear what the point of their putting up money is at all other than to help grease the wheels of a foreign takeover. Both Silver Lake and Affinity already get some of their own investment funds from Saudi Arabia.
The Financial Times previously reported that Kushner was instrumental in facilitating a deal between Saudi Arabia and EA, though SEC filings about the timeline for the transaction make no mention of that. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently met with Trump at the White House as part of a deal for AI chips, fighter jets, and other giveaways, where the President denied the Prince’s family having any significant private dealings with the Kingdom and brushed aside questions about MBS’s role in murdering a Washington Post journalist.
According to The New York Times and others, Saudi Arabia’s finances have grown increasingly shaky in recent years, with the Public Investment Fund pulling investments out of several other U.S. companies. Maybe that’s why it’s relying on $20 billion in loans to make the EA deal work. That high-interest debt will need to be serviced, either through big bets on AI revolutionizing game publishing or, more likely, big budget cuts and studio sell-offs.
EA shareholders will vote on whether or not to approve the generous buyout offer later this month, with the deal planned to close by mid-2026. While hundreds at the company behind Madden, EA Sports FC, The Sims, and Apex Legends could find themselves out of a job after that, bankers on Wall Street will be taken care of. Goldman Sachs is set to net $110 million from consulting on the transaction.
