MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS
Cutting through the M&A complexity IN ONE PROVED AN ILLUMINATING DISCUSSION, PANELLISTS DAVID ZEFFMAN, DAVID YATOM, ANDREA MARCHETTI AND ANTON KASZUBOWSKI SHARED REAL-WORLD STRATEGIES FOR GETTING DEALS DONE
The scene setter
mergers and in that process, the regulator also comes into the picture. When there is a change of control at an operator this triggers a full regulatory process which is multiplied where a company is licensed in a number of jurisdictions. Different jurisdictions bring different regulatory parameters and that creates complexity as we will discover. Along the way we will hopefully here some stragies for overcoming those challenges and getting deals done regardless. The international lawyer David Zeffman is a partner at CMS, where he leads the global governance group. He explains why M&A in gaming has a reputation for complexity. For a private practice lawyer, it’s a blessing that every jurisdiction has a different gambling regulatory regime. That applies also to
Former Malta regulator, Reuben Portanier is now a partner at GTG. He shared his thoughts to open the panel. When I was the gaming regulator for Malta the regulatory picture was quite simple. At the time, there were three regulatory bodies for online gaming in Europe: UK, Malta and Italy and the landscape was pretty simple. Then, in 2010 something changed. With the Bwin Santa Casa case, we saw the French coming up with their own regulatory body for online gaming, and that led to a domino effect with each country regulating at a national level. These rules not only covered market operation and responsible gaming obviously, having every regulatory body coming up with their own flavors of regulation, part of regulation it also involved day-to-day operators operations, their fitness, whether they’re in good standing. And this has to be done on a regular basis. Businesses are not static, so you have acquisitions and
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IMGL MAGAZINE | DECEMBER 2024
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