The takeover battle between rivals 888 Holdings Plc and GVC Holdings PLC is still far from reaching a conclusion as the target company bwin.party announced a revised offer from the former this morning.
Gibraltar-based gaming company 888 Holdings Plc, owned by brothers Avi and Aaron Shaked, sent a revised proposal to the board of bwin.party. The takeover target company was created after the merger between PartyGaming and Austrian betting firm Bwin back in 2011.
InterTrader was established in 2010 as a spread betting company, later expanding to include typical Forex and CFDs offerings. With the firm’s main focus on Europe, the company has been competing with a number of brokers in the main markets of bwin.party such as the UK, Germany, France and Spain.
Since InterTrader was established to capitalize on the existing affiliate structures that bwin.party had already been in possession of the company has not managed to compete with any of the big spread betting brands.
Financial Metrics of bwin.party
bwin.party digital’s revenues for 2014 totaled about £478.1 million, with InterTrader being included in the “others” segment of the company’s annual report. The revenues in this segment increased by 14 percent in 2014 to €48.9 million. According to the company, InterTrader and B2B both delivered strong growth but it was the Payments part of bwin.party's business that amounted to the greatest year-on-year increase helped by the acquisition of PXP in May 2014.
Back in July, a takeover offer from 888 Holdings Plc valued bwin.party at £870 million, the race was joined by GVC Holdings which put £1 billion on the table. Both offers were approved by the board and recommended to shareholders and the company was on the verge of signing with GVC,when a new offer hit home from 888 Holdings Plc just this morning.
Could InterTrader Be on the Market?
According to sources close to Finance Magnates, the push of bwin.party into financial spread betting has not been as successful as hoped and the massive competition unleashed after the MiFiD passporting from smaller EU jurisdictions like Cyprus has caught InterTrader unprepared.
While a source inside GVC Holdings has shared that the firm is not expecting to make any changes to the company’s portfolio after the takeover, if shareholders are to decide that any of the subsidiaries of the company are not feasible in the long run, InterTrader could go to market.
With the recent expansion of another big gaming company, Playtech, into financial trading, InterTrader could be a potential target for a takeover after the conclusion of the bidding war for bwin.party.
Bwin.party has not disclosed any financial details about the new offer it got from 888 Holdings PLC. A regulatory filing stated this morning, “A further announcement will be made in due course.”
