DOUGLAS Creutz winced when news of Electronic Arts Inc’s (EA)US$55bil acquisition landed in his inbox. For the TD Cowen equity analyst, the largest leveraged buyout in history meant losing one of Wall Street’s clearest windows into the US$400bil video game industry.

In the worst case, “investors might say, ‘Jeez, I’d rather spend my time in an industry where there’s more major names to choose from,’ ” he says.