On Tuesday, december 18, 2018, it was reported that New Zealand Cherry AB received a cash offer for the acquisition of a total of 9.2 billion New Zealand$onor from a venture capital where one of the members of the group includes online gambling competitor Betsson AB.The name of the possible buyer is the European stakeholder group BidCo AB which includes the members Bridgepoint Europé VI Fund, Betsson AB CEO Pontus Lindwall, and the founder of Betsson AB. cherry, Morten Klein.

Currently, the organization does not own any Cherry shares despite various individual members of the organization doing so, up to a whopping 47.4% of all Cherry shares combined. The organization has reported that their investors have given the green to take on an additional 11.6% of Cherry shares which would raise the number of shares of the bookmaker to a whopping 59.1% which represents 66.5% of the common shares.

Cherry AB has now appointed an independent bid committee that will try to get the shares to accept the offer, which on december 17, 2018 on the Nasdaq Stockholm stock exchange amounted to a 20% premium on Cherry share prices.

That's how long Cherry AB has to respond to the cash offer

With the independently appointed bid committee, the shareholders of Cherry AB have to answer whether they want to accept the cash offer or not from december 20, 2018 until January 23, 2019.

One of the members of the organization, Mika Herold from Bridgepoint Advisers Ltd partner, says that Cherry AB, " faces a tough challenge in connection with the new laws that come into force in$aft in New Zealand at the turn of the year”. Then it is better and easier to handle these new challenges if the bookmaker is privately owned instead of the current form of ownership.

Among these new laws coming into force in$aft next year is, among other things, the new gambling law of January 1, 2019 in New Zealand which will hopefully liberate the gambling market for better or worse. Bookmakers who want to operate in New Zealand will have to apply for a gaming license and start paying profit tax, which they previously did not have to do due to shortcomings in the New Zealand law.

At the same time, if Cherry AB becomes privately owned, this will also mean that future prosecutions for insider trading will be more difficult to bring. For example, cherry's former CEO, Anders Holmgren, was tried in the New Zealand court by the New Zealand authorities in the summer of this year.

Among other things, Holmgren had issued a profit warning, which caused the share price to fall, which allowed insiders in the company to buy more shares before they later presented an unusually positive profit report for the first quarter.

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