Could you elaborate on that last point or share a source? I don't doubt you but I don't understand the legal basis behind that move (but sounds interesting)!
The way it was described to me was that there's two major types of fine that the canadian government will levy against large companies that dump lots of workers at once.
1) More than 50 people within a 4week period.
Usually this means that the company must continue paying employment benefits on behalf of the company for a period of a year (iirc).
2) More than x% of your company being closed down.
You can get around #2 by claiming redundancies or claiming that you've moved the job to another canadian state (or, centralised a position), but once you give the studio its own legal entity and place an MD in charge (who is legally responsible for the studio) you can't do that any longer because the parent company continues to have a legal presence in the country, but operations are considered separate/independent.
Thus, if you close down the studio you've effectively terminated 100% of employment there which will garner super heavy fines.
Also also: Ubisoft doesn't want to piss of the canadian government either because nearly their entire profit exists in the tax break that montreal gives game companies.
.. but, like I said, this was told to me only a few times by a few high level directors and it was when we were talking about Vivendi trying to buy us, and they were also not laywers, so it could be a lot of chinese whispers.
But I've spoken to Yves, and while he's a really genuinely nice person... he will salt the earth before he sells the company.
I'm guessing here but the Canadian gov't often subsidizes tech & other engineering companies, so the strategy may be "have the company avail itself of as many subsidies as possible" with subsidies that commit the company to continue operating in City X for Y number of years.
dijit|5 years ago
The way it was described to me was that there's two major types of fine that the canadian government will levy against large companies that dump lots of workers at once.
1) More than 50 people within a 4week period.
Usually this means that the company must continue paying employment benefits on behalf of the company for a period of a year (iirc).
2) More than x% of your company being closed down.
You can get around #2 by claiming redundancies or claiming that you've moved the job to another canadian state (or, centralised a position), but once you give the studio its own legal entity and place an MD in charge (who is legally responsible for the studio) you can't do that any longer because the parent company continues to have a legal presence in the country, but operations are considered separate/independent.
Thus, if you close down the studio you've effectively terminated 100% of employment there which will garner super heavy fines.
Also also: Ubisoft doesn't want to piss of the canadian government either because nearly their entire profit exists in the tax break that montreal gives game companies.
.. but, like I said, this was told to me only a few times by a few high level directors and it was when we were talking about Vivendi trying to buy us, and they were also not laywers, so it could be a lot of chinese whispers.
But I've spoken to Yves, and while he's a really genuinely nice person... he will salt the earth before he sells the company.
aceofspades19|5 years ago
sequoia|5 years ago
example tech subsidy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Research_and_Experi...