Ladbroke bought the Coral betting shop chain from Bass for £375.5m,more than twice the book value of Coral’s tangible assets. The purchasemakes it the UK’s biggest bookmaker.
The two chains will be merged and Coral shops will become Ladbrokeoutlets. Ladbroke will sell 128 shops to the state-owned Tote to overcomeany objections from the Office of Fair Trading. The shops to be sold onare all within a quarter-mile of existing Ladbrokes shops, preventing areferral to the Monopolies Commission. Even after this sale Ladbroke willstill control over 30% of UK betting shops, plus 50 shops in Ireland, 8 inJersey and Bass’s shares in Satellite Information Services.
Ladbroke became the preferred bidder three weeks ago after overtaking Nomura Investments which bought the William Hill chain for £700m lastOctober. Bass now has a £3bn acquisition war chest and is widelythought to be lining up a major hotels deal in the Far East.
- Financial Times 02/01/98 page 1, page 15
- The Daily Telegraph 02/01/98 page 33, page 35 (City Diary), page 37(Racing Comment)
- The Times 02/01/98 page 40
- The Independent 02/01/98 page 20
- The Guardian 02/01/98 page 16
