A report from MCV is indicating that several employees are moving on because of the merger, but not as many as was initially thought.
MCV is reporting that Vivendi's U.K. staff will be completing their transition to Activision's Stockley Park facility from their office in Marlow. While many suspected mass layoffs after the $18.9 billion merger that led to the creation of the Activision Blizzard entity, Activision Blizzard's U.K. managing director Andrew Brown believes that "redundancies" have been kept to a minimum.
"We're getting the whole combined team together this week, so that will be the internal kick-off," said Brown. "We're really pleased with what's happened – there are some great calibre individuals at Vivendi and in the end, while some people chose to consider their futures elsewhere, a lot of people decided to join us."
"The reality is that practically everybody made redundant chose that option. It certainly wasn't that we said 'Okay, let's cut the workforce' – it didn't work like that at all," continued Brown. "We offered people a lot more jobs than were taken in the end. And we've tried to make sure everybody who did come across felt that it was a positive move. I think a lot of people made the active choice to join the business rather than feeling they were in a corner."
While Activision Blizzard looks to make Uxbridge its primary HQ, Vivendi's Marlow office will remain open with a skeleton staff.
"What we've discovered is that proximity to our European office is driving lots of benefits," commented Brown. "We're going to look at the expansion of our space to accommodate everybody, but we don't think it makes any sense having people half an hour away. We've got capacity to expand at Stockley Park and the benefits of being close to our European colleagues, so we decided this is the place to be."
Wayne Friday, Jon Tibble and Sarah Edmonds of Vivendi's U.K. sales team will not take positions at Activision Blizzard. Keith Cox will take on a role in trade marketing for the Red Octane brand and MCV is reporting that former Vivendi sales head Dave Gould will take a similar role at SCi.
Gareth Turnbull will become U.K. head of supply chain for Activision Blizzard along with Ryan Saunders, and George Georgiou will take up a senior role at the new publisher. Gary Chantler will be moving on from senior brand manager with Scott Wood taking his place, while Lucy Fairbrass has made the switch to Stockley Park and Cat Channon has left the PR department.
via GameDaily
No comments:
Post a Comment