EA plans tender offer for Take-Two: source

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Take-Two last month rejected EA's unsolicited offer. EA will offer Take-Two shareholders $26 a share, the same price at which it launched its all-cash bid, the person said.

Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick has called the bid "the wrong price and the wrong time," arguing that EA was trying to buy his company on the cheap just before the launch of Grand Theft Auto 4, the latest in a blockbuster franchise which debuts on April 29.

Take-Two this week forecast quarterly earnings higher than Wall Street estimates, saying orders for GTA 4 were better than expected.

"Pre-orders for GTA are very firm and better than we expected internally," Zelnick said on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, the two biggest owners of shares in Take-Two said they drastically cut their stakes in the video game publisher, potentially undermining management's stance that the $1.9 billion buyout offer was too low.

U.S. mutual fund company Oppenheimer Funds, Take-Two's biggest shareholder, halved its holdings to 8.8 million shares, or 11.5 percent, down from the 23 percent stake it held previously, according to U.S. regulatory filings.

FMR LLC, the parent company for the Fidelity mutual funds which was the second-largest owner of Take-Two shares, also reported that it had slashed its stake to 2.75 percent from 14.7 percent.

But Zelnick said earlier in the week that the large sales had not caused executives to reconsider their rejection of EA's offer.

"It certainly doesn't put any pressure on us. Who owns your shares isn't really the issue, after all we're here for all the shareholders," Zelnick said.

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