Canada is frequently considered one of the most attractive places to establish a business. The country attracts lots of investors as there are plenty of profitable small business opportunities in Canada. While investing in real estate, professional financial services, fitness, and recreational sports centers, waste management, or transportation and storage is a common practice in this country, now it seems like investors are interested in a completely new field of business. 

According to Bloomberg, Apollo Global Management Inc, a global alternative investment management firm that is one of the leading investment companies of the world, plans to take part in the iGaming landscape of Canada. In fact, the firm is interested in buying a popular Canadian entertainment and hospitality company, Great Canadian Gaming. Apollo is widely known for owning and operating companies like CareerBuilder, Cox Media Group, Intrado, Rackspace, Redbox, Shutterfly, and Smart & Final but nobody expected that they would run a gaming company and take part in the gambling industry. 

Photo by Eugene Aikimov on Unsplash

Apollo wins Great Canadian Gaming with 15% bid

Now as Bloomberg announces, Apollo Global Management won over Great Canadian Gaming which is a major gambling company in Canada. Apollo wanted to operate this Canadian company so much that the firm increased its offer for this casino operator by 15%. Now Apollo has to pay $45 per share while the earlier offer before the coronavirus pandemic started was $39 per share. 

Even though the final decision about buying the Great Canadian Gaming hasn’t been made yet, probably Apollo’s new bid is enough for securing a sufficient amount of votes to acquire the gaming firm. Currently, Great Canadian Gaming operates 26 gaming, entertainment, and hospitality facilities in Canada and some of these entertainment firms are Canadian casinos. In fact, as you can see on Canada-casino.org, some top online Canadian casinos are owned and operated by the Great Canadian Gaming. These casinos are known for excellent gaming service and secure payments. Having official support from Apollo global Management will probably improve the online gambling industry in Canada even more. 

Will investors support Apollo’s deal?

Apollo’s raised offer deserved great attention from investors that hold about 50% of the shares. Among them are BloombergSen Inc., CI Global Asset Management, and Burgundy Asset Management Ltd. Even though all three firms had been repeatedly saying that they would vote against Apollo’s deal at the coming shareholder meeting that was scheduled for Wednesday, now it seems like they have finally changed their minds as three of them supported Apollo’s offer. However, nothing is decided for now because this transaction needs ⅔ approval. 

According to Peter Meredith, the chairman of one of the casino companies of British Columbia, the purchase price of $45 per share is actually a great deal for shareholders. As he believes, this may be the main reason for supporting Great Canadian’s largest institutional shareholders. British Columbia is not the only one and there are some other firms as well that support Appolo’s offers but the company still has a long way to gain two-thirds of the votes. 

Apollo faced opposition from institutional shareholders 

In fact, some major investment firms are against the deal. For example, Glass Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services refused to support the new offer. These firms are authoritative proxy advisory companies that have a great influence on other investors. Their actions may affect Apollo’s plan badly as these firms encouraged other investors to vote against the deal. Besides, Sanjay Sen, co-founder of BloombergSen, an independent, partner-owned investment counseling firm, refused to accept Apollo’s bid. Even more, he criticized the offer and called it a “rock bottom price”. As Sen believes, Great Canadian Gaming still raises great funds itself and doesn’t need to be sold at all.

As CBC suggests, this strong opposition from institutional shareholders made Apollo Global Management step back and change its offers. As a consequence, the firm started to work on a higher bid but also, Apollo started thinking about a worse scenario where it would have to leave its offer and completely change the plan. However, even after some major shareholders are against Apollo’s deal, recently it was announced that some other shareholders have agreed to support the offer. Great Canadian Gaming announced that about 50% of the shares are already held by shareholders as they are committed to voting for the new deal. The final event about this issue took place on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the shares of the great Canadian closed at $37.24 

Needless to say that this increased interest in a gaming company will be a great success for the Canadian business sector. Even though gambling isn’t even considered legal in this country, now Canada is going to be filled with new business ideas. Currently, neither land-based gambling nor online gambling is officially permitted in this country but if Apollo finally wins Great Canadian Gaming the situation may change. 

Although Canadian players are restricted to take part in local gambling activities, Candian brick and mortar casinos do have permission to run their gambling operations within the borders of Canada. However, they can only offer their service to foreign players. Canadian players are not allowed to gamble on local online casinos as well. This is why they take part in offshore gambling sites so frequently for the price of their safety. No wonder that gambling-related law needs to be revised but the government doesn’t want to take any further steps and legalize gambling-related activities in the country. However, now if Apollo wins Great Canadian Gaming, more investments are predictable in the Canadian gaming industry and therefore, the situation may change.