TV-am is returning to the stock market metamorphosed into a casino
operator owning Crockfords, an internationally renowned casino in
London's Mayfair patronised by the world's high rollers.
The former broadcasting company lost its franchise when GMTV won the
breakfast-time slot in the recent auction. Now it is no more than a
shell company without a listing. Through a reverse takeover it will
become Crockfords. To finance expansion, a share issue is planned at 90p
a share to raise #50m. Before the issue the existing 5p shares will be
consolidated into 25p units.
TV-am said that because of the change in its business, some
shareholders may want to get out and therefore Hambros is offering 90p
per share for up to 2,657,452 existing TV-am shares or up to 20% of the
issued capital.
''The board believes that this acquisition will provide TV-am and its
shareholders with an exciting new business as an alternative to
liquidation,'' TV-am said.
Dealings in the new Crockfords shares will begin on September 1,
assuming Tv-am shareholders give approval to the move at a meeting the
previous day.
Crockfords will start with a market value of around #100m, said Mr
Richard Redmayne, a corporate financier at Smith New Court.
Casinos suffered heavily at the time of the Gulf war when Middle East
customers stayed away. Since then, they have staged a recovery. For the
24 weeks to June 13, Crockfords made a pre-tax profit of #10.9m on
turnover of #23.3m.
Because of the nature of the gaming business, a small group of players
can have a dramatic impact on the performance of a casino and
Crockfords' top ten players have accounted for more than 50% of the
turnover.
The company was acquired by its present management team in March 1989,
backed by a syndicate of venture capital investors led by Montagu
Private Equity.
Crockfords plans to acquire additional London casinos at the middle to
upper end of the market and may also seek suitable casino acquisitions
or start-up opportunities in continental Europe and other overseas
locations where gaming is well regulated.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article