Shares of Midway Games (
This is Vegas) are currently trading at 79 cents per share -- more than a 67 percent drop from its price a year ago.
The publisher saw a 12 percent drop on Monday alone,
according to Forbes, as the extent of the
credit crunch's impact on majority stakeholder Sumner Redstone became clear.
Redstone owns over 85 percent of stock through his companies National Amusements and Sumco. Last week, National Amusements sold $233 million worth of shares of its stock in CBS and Viacom at only 60 percent of the value it was targeting.
National Amusements was revealed to be financing $1.6 billion in debt -- currently, the company is facing a December deadline to repay $800 million of that sum, leading some to connect the stock sale and the impending loan issue.
Much of the blame for the company's troubles has been placed at the feet of Shari Redstone, Sumner Redstone's daughter, who serves as president of National Amusements (as well as chairwoman of Midway's board of directors) and whose movie theater chain expansion is said to have been extremely costly.
Midway
recently sold $40 million in accounts receivables to National Amusements to fund their holiday titles in a recently-announced factoring agreement. Widespread media reports suggest that support from National Amusements has been necessary just to keep the embattled publisher afloat.
