ISTANBUL: Online gambling company GVC has given away its Turkey business, hoping the move will help smooth its takeover of Ladbrokes after GVC’s lenders baulked at its exposure to a country where internet betting is illegal.
GVC had agreed on Nov. 2 to sell its business in Turkey for as much as 150 million euros ($186 million), before it struck the much bigger Ladbrokes deal worth at least 3.1 billion pounds ($4.3 billion).
But in the Feb. 9 prospectus for the Ladbrokes deal, which runs to several hundred pages, GVC said it was waiving its payment for the sale and would instead book a 46 million euro loss on the disposal to a company called Ropso Malta.
Ropso is backed by individuals that GVC said had provided IT services for its Turkish business. It was incorporated five days before GVC announced the sale of its Turkish assets to the company, according to Maltese company filings seen by Reuters.
A Reuters analysis of the documents for the Ladbrokes deal shows Ropso took control of the Turkey unit for free on Dec. 21, two days after the disposal officially completed.
Ropso had agreed to pay for the business in monthly installments over five years, deferred to start after the second month following completion. But GVC decided instead to quickly extract itself through a so-called clean-break notice.
