Over the past few weeks Sega has been making a choice on which of two companies to merge with. On one hand they had Namco, who would merge and develop everything under the "Sega" brand from then onwards. On the other hand they had Sammy, the maker of popular arcade games where the player can win prizes, and pinball machines. The president of Sammy would take over as the president of the new merged company, and while their games aren't as exciting as Namco's, Sammy is almost constantly making a nice profit.
No doubt after many shareholder meetings, Sega have announced that they intend to merge with Sammy. While Sega has a debt of 80 billion yen (US$674 million), Sammy has a value of 133 billion yen (US$1.1 billion). True, it's not as exciting to us gamers as a merge with Namco would have been, but it does help ensure a future to the company, and to the characters like Sonic the Hedgehog.
Sega will have finished their audit of Sammy's financial ecords before the May 9th deadline that Namco set, and after that the merger will move even further ahead.