The online casino news again concerns Bwin.party

Once again the latest online casino news here at onlinecasino.ie concerns the ownership of Bwin.party Digital Entertainment. Analysts in the gambling sector have long been expecting consolidations within the gambling industry, particularly among the online casino and casino games operators, but it would appear that there is nothing straightforward in achieving those objectives. Bwin.party one of our biggest online casino operators effectively put themselves up for sale at the end of last year and two weeks ago the board finally recommended their shareholders to accept an offer from another of our major online casino operators 888 Holdings which valued the company at approximately £900 million. In doing so they turned down a slightly higher offer from GVC Holdings who had made a bid in conjunction with Amaya, the Canadian owners of PokerStars, on the basis that there were far higher risks associated with that bid. It would appear however that GVC Holdings are not going away, and have now increased their bid to £1 billion, this time in conjunction with Cerberus, a £25 billion hedge fund who are also a shareholder in Gala Coral. Clearly Cerberus have much more financial muscle than Amaya which GVC hopes will alleviate some of the doubts expressed by the Bwin.party board, but it is thought that the new bid will comprise a much smaller cash element than the original bid, down from 45% to 20% and less than the 40% cash share of the 888 Holdings bid. The battle for Bwin.party is clearly set to roll on for some time yet. In the meantime Gala Coral confirmed that they have agreed to merge with Ladbrokes in a deal worth an estimated £2.3 billion. However even this consolidation move may yet run into difficulties from the monopolies commission, so once again we will have to wait and see. One welcome bit of casino games news from Gala Coral is that propose to open their first brand new bingo club in many years.