Gala Coral Sold to the Rank Group

Confirmation has arrived from land based casino and online gambling firm Gala Coral that a deal to sell them has finally been struck.

The company will be bought by the Rank Group plc and the cost of the transaction will be £205 million. Once the deal goes through it will be mean that Rank will be the biggest land based casino operator in the UK, with a total of 59 casinos. This total will include the 23 Gala casinos though the new deal. They will also have a total of 13 non operating licenses once they pick up the 4 which Gala currently have.

Phased Payments

The details which have been released so far suggest that £182.5 million will be paid upon completion of the deal. The remainder of the cash will be placed in escrow and will be released in phases up to August of 2015 as certain conditions are met.

It has taken some time for the deal to go through and at one point it looked as though the whole thing was going to be called off. This was when the Rank Group said that the transaction was not going to be beneficial to the two parties and walked away.

However, last week saw the two companies get together again and a deal was eventually hammered out. The first official quote to come out is from Carl Leaver, who is the CEO of Gala Coral. He said that the purchase will “crystallise significant” value for both their shareholders and debt investors alike.

It will probably be September before the transaction is finalised and it is dependent upon the shareholders of the Rank Group agreeing to it.