When someone cries wolf it’s expected that people will no longer believe a lot that comes out of that person’s mouth. Without want of a better comparison the industry may start talking about Sportingbet in this vain after they today announced that they’d not be continuing takeover talks with Unibet. That’s if there were any in the first place. Who knows?
Either this or maybe Unibet got all pissed at them releasing the plans without their permission and forced the statement. They could end up living happily ever after, till death do us part though.
Sportingbet’s statement read thus:
“The board of Sportingbet notes continuing press speculation following an article which specifically referred to merger discussions with Unibet Group, a company listed on the OMX Nordic Exchange Stockholm. Unibet informed the company today that it has withdrawn from those talks.”
Well that does suggest there were talks over a merger and one of the drawbacks about being a public company is that when you get bad press, the share price drops – to the tune of 5% in this case for Sportingbet. Oops.
Unibet CEO Henrik Tjarnstrom did yesterday tell eGR that the company was in talks with “many companies” adding it is “looking at different opportunities, it could be mergers, it could be acquisitions”. Obviously this media coverage threw a spanner in the works.
