Duke desires Mecca Bingo
3rd January, 2008
Duke Street Capital, the leading European buy out fund has now repeatedly made an offer to rank to purchase the UK’s most recognised bingo franchises, Mecca Bingo. Rank Group Plc, the leading European gaming business is now papering interested in the offer, which cannot be revealed as is yet to be disclosed to the general public.
Rank Group is a public limited company, which means that the shareholders as well as anyone else are free to look at the share prices at any time. Rank’s share prices have been steadily falling for the last year from 225.95p per share January 05, 2007 to 92.5p per share January 02, 2008. It has been speculated that the fall of the share price is causing Rank to seriously consider selling off one of its most important chains in the bingo business.
Mecca Bingo has both online and off-line resources to offer bingo players. Nevertheless, its land-based bingo halls have been seriously affected by the introduction of the smoking ban as well as a double taxation policy. Whilst online bingo operators avoided severe effects of such changes in the law, off-line businesses have suffered greatly.
Unfortunately neither Rank nor Duke could be reached to comment the progress of the deal or the situation in general.
The falling share price of Rank Group and generally difficult circumstances of the business have caused many other companies to propose offers, but Rank has rejected them all. The biggest offer came from Harrahs, the American casino operator.
