M&A
Acquisitions, mergers, and divestments.
The boards have signed the common merger plan that fixes the terms first announced in September: 0.668 Lottomatica shares per CIRSA share, a €262m CIRSA dividend before completion and a €744m capital return after it. With Blackstone committed, the votes are close to a formality. The regulators are not.
The Iris Capital vehicle that took 85.77% of the owner of Cairns' Reef Hotel Casino at A$3.87 a unit is now offering the holdouts A$4.67 and saying it will delist the trust if it can. On the bidder's own share count, one investor with 9.84% decides whether it can force the rest out.
Sportradar is selling the team-facing half of a business it bought for €192.2 million in 2021 and keeping the cameras and graphics it says underpin its core products. It says the price beats the multiple its own shares trade on, which says as much about the shares as the deal.
The London-listed events group is paying 11.1 times Clarion's expected 2027 EBITDA, part-funded by a £940 million share placing. The gambling industry's largest trade show is about to pass from private equity to a listed owner that names gaming as a growth category.
SkyCity Entertainment Group will run a formal, UBS-led sale of SkyCity Adelaide after inquiries from what it calls "credible interested parties", and has hired advisers to engage with suitors for the entire group. The board says a sale is not certain, and that the approaches it has already had undervalue the company.
Century Mile and Century Downs go to Highfield Investment Group, a Calgary developer with a thoroughbred racing business, at 6.1 times last year's EBITDA. The rent Century stops paying is worth nearly half the price every year, which is why the deal matters more to its balance sheet than its proceeds suggest.
Seven months after buying BMM Testlabs, the New York investment firm Visualize has completed its purchase of eCOGRA, creating a testing and certification group it says holds licences or accreditations in more than 800 jurisdictions. The price of neither deal has been disclosed.
GiG Software has signed a share purchase agreement for evoke's African operator and says the proposed deal will be finalised by 30 September. The signing puts a clock on the deferred payment and, for the first time, numbers on the business GiG is buying.
The Liège group has bought 100% of the company behind Carousel.be, its partner since 2012, taking over a B+ online licence and the gaming hall in Harelbeke that Belgian law requires behind it. The price is undisclosed, and the sellers are keeping the 711 brand that grew out of Carousel.
People Inc. has walked away from its June proposal to take MGM Resorts private, and MGM shares fell 8.6% after hours to $34.61, far below the $48.30 that was on the table. Diller keeps his roughly 27% stake and says he is still open to "a range of alternatives".
Caesars Entertainment shareholders approved Fertitta Entertainment's $31-a-share takeover at a special meeting in Reno on Tuesday, with votes in favour equal to about 65.4% of outstanding shares, the company confirmed in a filing on Wednesday. The deal now depends on a Federal Trade Commission second request and gaming regulators in every Caesars state, while a disclosure shows the President's managers sold a small Caesars holding in July.
Jesse Lynn and Ted Papapostolou resigned "effective immediately" on 16 September and the Icahn Group waived its right to replace them, five weeks after the board declined to treat Icahn's $34 as superior to Fertitta's $31. Two days earlier the FTC asked both sides for more documents, which stops the antitrust clock until they comply. Shareholders vote on 22 September regardless.