Rank Group has appointed Sir Richard Needham to the board as a non-executive director. Needham, 70, was the UK’s longest serving minister in Northern Ireland from 1985 to 1992 and also served as the government’s minister of trade from 1992 to 1994. His place on the board commences from 1 May and Ian Burke, Rank chairman and chief executive, commented: “We believe that Sir Richard’s diverse experience in commerce and industry, and in government, will be of significant benefit to the future development of Rank.”
OPAP has followed up plans to enter an online joint venture by stating they won’t only be sticking to their own. eGR reports that a spokesman told them they “don’t just want to stay within Greece but move into other regulated markets”. He then added: “The first priority is Greece and we would like to capitalise on the strengths the OPAP brand has here. So the objective of the JV is to have B2C activity in Greece to start with, then abroad in the second stage. The JV will definitely only target regulated markets and we are not going to be acting as pirates. That was one of the criteria we had when selecting the companies; that they are only in regulated markets.
Amaya Gaming Group’s takeover offer for casino game supplier Cryptologic has been made unconditional. It has been confirmed they received “valid acceptances” from 73.76 percent of shareholders. Add this to the existing 7.02 percent they own and it gives them the threshold of 80 percent they need. Now they are obliged to pay for the 10.19 million tendered shares within three business days and Amaya has extended the offer period for shareholders to April 18, 10 am ET.
