Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING FEBRUARY 2018 12 ARISTOCRAT LEISURE LTD has completed its US$990 million acquisition of social gaming company Big Fish Games. In a filing to the Australian Securities Exchange, Aristocrat said that all conditions and requirements for the acquisition have been fulfilled with CEO and Managing Director Trevor Croker stating, “the strategic and financial benefits of the acquisition are highly compelling. Big Fish will immediately provide scale across our entire digital ARISTOCRAT COMPLETES US$990 MILLION BIG FISH ACQUISITION The original developer of Baha Mar Resort has filed a US$2.25 billion lawsuit against China Construction America (CCA) accusing the Chinese state-backed contractor of massive fraud which ultimately led to the project’s failure. As reported by Reuters , BML Properties Ltd, headed by Baha Mar founder Sarkis Izmirlian, filed the 259-page complaint with the state court in Manhattan claiming that CCA – a subsidiary of China State Bankrupt developer cites massive fraud in US$2.25 billion Baha Mar lawsuit platform and our social casino business will become the second largest social casino publisher globally. “Big Fish’s digital-first social casino content and industry leading meta-game capability and applications are highly complementary to Aristocrat’s existing and industry-leading land-based digital content business.” Big Fish, previously a subsidiary of Churchill Downs Incorporated, is a Construction Engineering Corp Ltd – sabotaged the project by deliberately understaffing and using it to train workers for other projects in the area. The delays ultimately saw BML industries lose its US$845 million investment when Baha Mar declared bankruptcy in 2015 despite being 97% complete. CCA later struck a deal with the Bahamian government to resume construction and in December 2016 Hong Kong’s Chow Tai Fook Enterprises (CTFE) was confirmed as Baha Mar’s buyer and new owner. According to BML’s lawsuit, “The scheme was based on CCA’s efforts to falsely create the appearance that it was working toward an on time and on budget opening in December 2014 while knowingly and fraudulently concealing its real intent not to construct the project on time and on budget and in the process extort more money than it earned and was due.” global publisher of free-to-play games that operates across three key business lines focused on specific game segments, including Social Casino, Social Gaming and Premium Paid games. Big Fish is headquartered in Seattle, USA and has approximately 700 full-time staff. It reported adjusted revenue of US$458 million and Adjusted EBITDA of US$83 million for the 12 months to 30 September 2017.