Japanese holding company Sega Sammy Holdings (formed by the merger of Sega and Sammy Corporation in 2004) announced plans to acquire Finnish mobile game developer Rovio Entertainment Oyj, best known for the Angry Birds franchise, for €706 million ($775 million).

For the first time, information about the acquisition of Rovio appeared back in January. Then the Israeli company Playtika was interested in it, which offered €750 million, but the negotiations between the companies ended in nothing last month. At the same time, Rovio confirmed that it is still in negotiations with other parties.

Sega Sammy’s offer is 63.1% higher than Rovio’s share price on January 19 (the last day of trading before news of the company’s possible acquisition emerged) and 19% higher than last Friday, April 14.

Against the background of the announcement, the shares of the Finnish developer soared by 18.8%, while the shares of Sega Sammy, on the contrary, fell by 4.2%. The founder of Kantan Games (an independent consulting company specializing in the Japanese game market) Serkan Toto commented on this: “Angry Birds is known everywhere in the world. But the brand is already past its peak. I think investors (in Sega Sammy) are disappointed by this use of 700 million euros.”