William Hill bidding Starts This Tuesday

Tuesday the 6^th July is the start of the first round of bidding for the European assets of William Hill with favourite at the moment being Apollo Global Management, the giant buyout firm that already owns Italy’s Lottomatica.

However speculation is building that some joint venture could materialise between Entain, Betfred and 888 Holdings.

Caesars Entertainment started what is believed to be the biggest asset fight of the year when buying William Hill and stating it wanted to sell off all its European business and retain just the US facing assets.

Apollo have already done due diligence on William Hill as it was at one stage going up against Caesars for the entire William Hill business and so knows more than its competitors on the value of the business.

But shareholders at 888 Holdings want to majority family owned Shaken Family to lodge a bid for William Hill, however it is speculated that this would only be online and the retail business could be sold off to Betfred.

Analysts believe that the Entain interest will not really materialise into a serious bid as it already holds Ladbrokes and Coral retail outlets in its portfolio and would have to sell the majority off to pass competitions regulation.

So Apollo seem to be the favourites to buy the whole business and indeed keep it all, already rumours suggest that William Hill’s Chief Ulrik Bengtsson would stay on in the role should Apollo be successful.

Any bid would have to be around the £1.2 billion that has been floated and Apollo with its indication that it would retain all the business with maybe a small number of retail closures would be the most preferred from a William Hill aspect, any other option would be confusing with purchase and sale and any of the mentioned would have to pass competitions approval.

Tuesday the 6^th July will be very interesting to see who bids first and if there are any surprise entrants.