GVC Holdings makes bid for Bwin.Party

Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment announced in November last year that they were in takeover discussions with “a number of interested parties”.

Yesterday one of those interested parties announced they have made a bid. It’s not one of the names bandied about as a potential suitor in November last year.

Bwin.Party, owners of the Bwin and PartyCasino brands, is a company that has been valued at times during the last 12 months around £1 billion. You’d expect any company willing to fork out that sort of money to be of similar size at least. Perhaps even bigger.

Indeed the names mentioned back in November: Playtech (£2.5 billion), Ladbrokes (£1 billion), Amaya (CAD$ 4 billion) all fit this bill.

GVC Holdings do not. In both revenue and market cap terms they’re about a third the size of Bwin.Party. But that hasn’t stopped them from having a crack…confirming in a news release Friday that they had made a takeover proposal for their much larger rival.

Bwin.Party did put out a release of their own on Friday confirming the GVC bid, but also saying that merger/takeover discussions were continuing, “with a number of third parties”.

So who are GVC?

You probably haven’t heard of them, but you may have heard of one of the brands they own (or part own) – Sportingbet, CasinoClub and Betboo. The group employs around 700 staff in offices in Ireland, Israel, Malta, The Philippines, UK and Uruguay. They are listed on London’s AIM (small cap) exchange. They may be in the main exchange pretty soon  if their bold plans come to fruition.