The bwin.party board of directors has accepted the £1,16 billion offer of GVC Holdings and as a result 888 Holdings announced that they have withdrawn their offer for the company. With that, the most exciting online gambling acquisition of the summer is officially a done deal!
The bidding war over the purchase of bwin.party started back in March when bwin.party announced that it is currently in negotiations with several companies. Since July only two serious offers remained, that of GVC Holdings and 888 Holdings.
First, bwin.party announced that they find the offer by GVC Holdings sufficient, but on July 17 888 Holdings also made their offer, which bwin.party accepted.
The deal seemed to be a lock, but on July 20 GVC Holdings made a new, bigger offer for £906.5 million, however, this was not accepted by bwin.party.
On August 7, GVC came back with a new offer of £1,16 billion which was way bigger than the £898.3 million offer of 888 Holdings.
888 Holdings decided to up its offer but in the end the board of directors at bwin.party accepted the GVC Holdings offer, which came as quite to surprise to many market analysts, who expected 888 to come out as a winner.
On September 3rd 888 Holding announced that since the bwin.party board of directors is more interested in the GVC Holdings offer, they are withdrawing their offer.
