After lots of corporate restructuring and selling off of its assets, it seems like Sony has even lost faith in some of their long term investments, specifically this time in their large amount of stock in Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd.
In the coming days, Sony will be selling off all of its shares in Square, a deal that is going to bring in a lot of cash for Sony, and possibly some questions behind Square’s future endeavors. While we’ll probably never know the true reasoning behind this deal, most industry speculation is pointing to a lack of confidence in their (Square) products, or maybe even that Square simply won’t play the exclusivity game anymore, as Kingdom Hearts III and Final Fantasy XV are now both coming to Xbox One.
The deal will be made between Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary within Sony, and one of Japan’s largest brokerage firms, SMBC Nikko Securities Inc., for the transfer of 9,520,000 shares they owned in Square Enix for years.
The transfer is reportedly going to amount somewhere near 4.8 billion yen (roughly $47 million dollars), which will naturally be straight profits, as Sony is probably trying to get into the black for this quarter of 2014. The full transfer value will be officially announced on April 17th.