Playtech Acquires AvaTrade, Optimal Closes In On Skrill Deal

Playtech is delighted with its $105 million acquisition of CDF trading company AvaTrade.
Online gambling software giant Playtech has established that it will acquire the platform that is currency-trading for $105 million.
The move is the latest in a string of online trading business acquisitions by Playtech as it seeks to diversify its offering beyond its casino, sports betting and poker operations, at a time when the online gambling industry is coming under stricter regulatory and financial burden.
In Playtech bought Plus500 for £460 million ($718 million) february.
Plus500, like AvaTrade, in a ‘contract-for-difference’ (CFD) broker that enables customers to take a position on markets and trade on motions of the market price without owning those assets.
In April this year, Playtech acquired TradeFX, a trading platform and payment solutions provider, for €208 million ($230 million).
Two Million Trades each Month
Founded in 2006, AvaTrade has 20,000 registered customers who execute more than two million trades per month. The company’s total trading volumes surpass $60 billion per according to its website month.
‘The Ava Group is really a well-recognized and established online CFD broker with multiple regulatory licenses and a customer that is strong with insignificant geographic overlap using the TradeFX Group,’ said Mor Weizer, CEO of Playtech. ‘We are very excited concerning the opportunities for the Group arising from the combination of the Trade FX Group and the Ava Group which we are confident will deliver term that is long for Shareholders.’
‘The acquisition of the Ava Group is another milestone that is important Playtech’s strategy to expand and enhance its overall technology offering through multiple vertical areas,’ he added. ‘Since the current earnings-enhancing acquisition of TradeFX and the creation of our financials unit we have tried further opportunities to broaden our reach into this vertical.’
Optimal Strategy
Meanwhile, Optimal Payments has announced that it expects to complete its acquisition of rival online payment provider Skrill by the end of the month.
The company will acquire Skrill in a reverse takeover deal for €720 million ($799.7 million) and 37,493,053 new ordinary shares.
‘Completion of the acquisition of Skrill continues to be susceptible to regulatory approval by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, which is expected to be made no later than 30 July 2015, unless the FCA exercises its statutory right to interrupt the consideration period,’ Optimal said in a official statement. ‘Completion of the acquisition will occur shortly after the receipt of FCA approval.’
Optimal said the deal will be ‘transformational and value enhancing’ for the company, helping it to become the ‘leading payment and digital wallet provider with significant international scale and reach.’
Jackpot Digital Buys PokerTek
Finally, capping down a week that is busy the industry’s M&A lawyers, software provider Jackpot Digital has announced a deal which will notice it get all the assets of PokerTek from Multimedia for $5.4 million.
PokerTek, which builds electronic dining table games, has generated approximately $3.5 million over the past 12 months, and Jackpot Digital said the integration of its existing platform aided by the acquired assets would ultimately improve user-experience and increase revenue for the company.
New Jersey Online DDoS Attacks on Regulated Web Sites Arrive with Bitcoin Ransom Notes
Current New Jersey DDoS attacks on unnamed regulated sites had been combined with a ransom note promising future, more severe attacks should organizations not comply. (Image: rodin.com.au)
DDoS (distributed denial of solution) isn’t a real possibility that any gaming that is online ever wishes to deal with, but some regulated New Jersey web sites had to do exactly that last week.
New Jersey’s fledgling online gambling industry is targeted, evidently for the very first time, by these distributed attacks.
Late last week, at least four unnamed sites had been derailed by a hacker, or hackers, who flooded the sites’ bandwidths with traffic, rendering them inoperable, and ultimately taking them offline for around half an hour.
The attacks were accompanied by a ransom note for a sum that is undisclosed payable in Bitcoin, with a risk of the more severe assault to follow.
Not New, But Frustrating
DDoS attacks are nothing brand new for the gambling that is online, of course. In fact, they’re as old as the industry itself, but there are suggestions that incidents of the unwelcome actions have been growing. Some specialists even claim that assaults across all online industries really doubled in 2014.
High-profile operators on the getting end last year included Betfair, that was targeted on Grand National time, the biggest UK horse race meet of the year in terms of betting.
Attackers usually time their efforts to coincide with big sporting events in the hope that operators will just pay up instead than lose business. PokerStars, Unibet, and state that is swedish monopoly Svenska Spel are also all present victims.
Chances of Prosecution Slim
Despite the initial interruption, it appears that the situation is now stable and has been effectively dealt with by this new Jersey market’s cybersecurity teams. The battle between online gambling sites and the hackers is certainly one of mouse and cat, of strategy and counterstrategy: as protection technology improves, so do the hackers’ efforts to breach it.
Nj Division of Gaming Enforcement President David Rebuck said this week that the matter was now being examined by state police, the FBI, and the latest Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, also as their own company. The various agencies, he said, were hunting a ‘known actor’ who had ‘done this before.’
Opportunities of prosecution are slim, nevertheless. To date, only two guys have been convicted for launching DDoS attacks. Those were two UK-based Poles whom made the blunder of threatening an operator they knew individually and agreeing to meet him in a hotel room. The operator, of course, brought the authorities with him. In 2013, the hapless pair were sentenced to 5 years in prison by a court in britain.
LVS Attack
Such assaults are maybe not limited to online gambling, of course. In February 2014, Las Vegas Sands Corporation (LVS), owned by anti-online curmudgeon Sheldon Adelson, was subjected to a massive cyber attack that had been believed to own emanated from Iran. On February 10, LVS was plunged into chaos as computers began flatlining and servers shutting down. Hard drives were wiped clean as malware ripped through the company’s networks.
The decision was taken to sever the multibillion dollar operation completely from the Internet as hackers began compressing and downloading batches of sensitive files, comprising everything from high-roller credit checks to details of global computer systems.
The attack caused an estimated $20 million worth of damage. The attackers later claimed their DDoS actions was indeed been influenced after hearing remarks made by Adelson in 2013 about ‘dropping the bomb’ on Iran.
NY Casino License Bidding Process Receives One Applicant
Tiago Downs, the bidder that is sole the fourth NY casino license, proposes an improved expansion package having did not impress final December. (Image: weny.com)
Regulators in nyc State have slim indian dreaming slot machine free download pickings whenever they come to decide on the winner of the fourth Upstate casino license in the economically deprived Southern Tier region.
Just one single contender submitted a proposition for Monday’s deadline, while a rival pulled out at the minute that is last.
The Tioga Downs racino in Nichols is the one and only applicant for the certain area, by having a $195 million expansion proposal to its current facility.
The proposal that is aborted from businessman Jeffrey C. Hyman, was pulled having been dealt ‘a fatal blow’ by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
Hyman said his task would have been ‘seismic,’ which may have been what the environmental people were complaining about in the first place, especially considering there is an ongoing debate about fracking in the area.
Snubbed
Unfortunately, Jeff Gural, owner of Tioga Downs, didn’t impress the Gaming Control Board during the original licensing hearing with his project in December 2014, although he’s since come up having an package that is improved.
Back then, the board recommended three casino licenses, for Monticello, in the Catskills; Schenectady; and the Finger Lakes area, snubbing the Southern Tier and Tioga Downs completely, despite having been granted the powers to recommend a license that is fourth.
Gural had been furious during the decision and extremely critical of the board. He argued that a casino in the Southern Tier could be perfectly logical, because the closest competitor is Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, 90 kilometers south in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
‘It’s got nothing to do I have enough money,’ he fumed with me. ‘ But the individuals regarding the Southern Tier?’
‘And what actually pisses me down,’ he continued, warming to his theme, ‘is the governor asked me to spend $800,000 of my cash to pass Local Law 1, Proposition One [on the expansion of casino gaming]. What was that all about? We mean… the entire thing is sickening in all honesty with you.’
Outcry
Such ended up being the outcry among locals, in fact, that Governor Andrew Cuomo intervened, requesting that the Gaming Commission reconsider.
‘As this would function as the last license granted in New York State, it may excite national competition by interested events that submit better still applications than 1st round,’ suggested Cuomo. ‘If you agree to the request, the [casino board] should quickly establish a process for the fourth license that could be complete as expeditiously possible, as the Southern Tier needs jobs and investment now.’
The board complied, a decision it would likely now regret, since it finds itself facing a ‘bidding war’ of 1 and under political pressure to award a permit to a person who has been very critical of its decision making processes.
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