Manuel Lao, historical owner of Cirsa, sold the company to Blackstone for just under 2 billion euros, which also included the debt of the group that was around 950 million. For its part, Blackstone became strong - although not shareholder - in Codere since in 2013 acquired its debt for 100 million euros from Credit Suisse, BBVA and Barclays. However, Blackstone's intention is to enter into its shareholding.
Now, Blackstone is looking for a way to convince the rest of the shareholders of the positive outcome of a merger between the two companies. However, the reluctance of the Martinez Sampedro and the company staff, who could lose up to 2,000 jobs with the operation due to duplications and closures of branches, make the North American fund project, for now, to overcome several obstacles.
But the truth is that the funds that have control of Codere and Cirsa, like all, seek profitability. And a merger of these characteristics would save costs by approximately 100 million euros and eliminate direct competition.
The dream of Blackstone was to group Codere, Cirsa and Luckia into one company, but given Luckia owners refusal to sell, the US fund abandoned that operation but not the project to merge the two giants of the Spanish gaming industry.
The Codere group obtained a net profit of 2.8 million euros last year, compared to the losses of 1.12 billion euros registered in 2016. While Cirsa, the first Spanish company in the gaming and leisure sector, obtained in 2017, an operating profit of 427 million euros, 7.2% more than in 2016.
Source: GMB / OKdiario.com
