The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced that they are looking into the pending $120 million acquisition of Novomatic UK assets by Inspired Entertainment.
In June this year, Inspired Entertainment, announced they have agreed to acquire the gaming technology group, Novomatic UK. This Novomatic Group division supplies category B3, C and D gaming terminals to pubs, arcades, motorways services areas and holiday resorts in the UK.
With this multimillion-dollar procurement…
…Inspired is set to manage over 75,000 gaming machines across the region and Europe. The company also expects to achieve between $12.3 to $13.3m of synergies through shared costs and an increased scale. With this business move, they are striving to broaden offerings, bring differentiated gaming products to new sectors and geographies, accelerate key growth initiatives and offer enhanced capabilities, systems, field services, and content.
Assessing The Consequence Of The Merger
The Competition and Market Authority is the non – ministerial government department in the United Kingdom, responsible for strengthening business competition and preventing and reducing anti-competitive activities.
In this specific case…
…the organization is going to inspect the purchase until September 20, when it will be decided whether the second phase of the investigation is warranted, with interested parties invited to issue a comment on the deal until Thursday, August 8, 2019.
The CMA is to judge whether this transaction and creating an enlarged organization would result in a significant lessening of competition within the UK market.
Issuing a commencement notice, the CMA notes that:
“The Competition and Markets Authority hereby gives notice pursuant to section 96(2A) of the Act that the merger notice provided by Inspired Entertainment Inc. and Novomatic UK in relation to the anticipated acquisition by Inspired Entertainment Inc. of certain business of Novomatic Limited, including Astra Games Ltd (excluding its casino business), Bell Fruit Group Ltd, Gamestec Leisure Limited, Harlequin Gaming Limited, Playnation Limited and Innov8 Gaming Limited…
…meets the requirements of section 96(2) of the act. The initial period defined in section 34ZA (3) of the Act in relation to the Merger will, therefore, commence on the first working day after the date of this notice, i.e. on 26 July 2019. The deadline for the CMA to announce its decision whether to refer the merger for a phase two investigation is therefore 20 September 2019.”
Executive Chairman of Inspired Entertainment, Lorne Weil, said at the time of the deal initially being agreed:
“The potential acquisition of NTG is transformational for Inspired, enabling us to dramatically increase the size, scale and scope of our business by combining our highly complementary, but largely non – overlapping, business. We expect to leverage our superior game, technology, operational capabilities, and respective footprints to augment the existing growth trend for our enterprise.”
Source:
“CMA to look into $120m Inspired and Novomatic deal”, casinobeats.com, July 29, 2019.
