William Hill had a very busy year in 2016 firstly with a mostly unwanted approach by Rank and 888 Holdings to acquire a majority share of the UK Bookmaker that eventually failed due to the William Hill Board not seeing any value in the deal, then William Hill went for a surprise acquisition of their own in the form of Amaya which owns the world’s most popular online poker site in PokerStars.
However in the end William Hills largest shareholder Parvus Asset Management who has a 14% stake in the bookmaker pushed against the purchase of Amaya and so the talks broke down.
At the end of the year William Hill announced their annual profits would be down by £20 million following what the company said was "customer friendly” football and horse-racing results.
Many observers believed that even with the not so good results William Hill would push on alone and not engage in any further acquisitions or flirt with a sale following Group chief executive, Philip Bowcock comments on 2017 saying "With key underlying trends continuing to be positive, the recent run of sporting results have not changed our confidence in a better performance in 2017.”
But that could all change after it has been reported over the weekend that Parvus Asset Management the secretive hedge fund management company are now pushing William Hill to sell. It is understood they fear their investment will lose money if William Hill do not team up with an up and coming betting or online firm, the trouble is there are not many out there that could take on the size of William Hill.
Rumour are abound that GVC Holdings could be the one to make a successful bid, with brands already owned like PartyGaming, Bwin, Sportingbet, Foxy Bingo and many others the company could handle William Hill and analyst’s believe the synergies with both companies would be a good fit.
Source: GMB / Gaming-awards.com
