Aquis Entertainment, the company that has owned and operated Casino Canberra for the past eight years, has announced that it has finally received regulatory approval for the sale of the casino to Iris CC Holdings.
The casino is the main asset of Aquis Entertainment and it is set to be sold to Iris CC Holdings for a total of 63 million Australian dollars. The company has made the announcement in a filing in which it noted that “all of the conditions precedent to completion of the share purchase agreement have been satisfied”.
The deal is not yet fully closed but at this point it shouldn’t be more than a formality as the two companies have to agree on an appropriate closing date. The filing also revealed that Aquis Entertainment is considering using the funds from the sale to consolidate the company’s future “as a listed entity”.
The sale is expected to be completed “by the end of January”, around six months after Aquis Entertainment first announced that it accepted the offer from Iris CC Holdings for Casino Canberra. At that time Iris CC Holdings announced that it was going to keep all the employees that are currently working at Casino Canberra.
Earlier this year, Aquis Entertainment had received an offer worth 52 million Australian dollars for Casino Canberra from Capital Leisure & Entertainment, which is owned and controlled by interests associated with the Oscars Group, the hospitality giant that owns 30 different venues in New South Wales.
The owners of Casino Canberra did sign a share purchase agreement with Oscars but then received a better offer from Iris CC Holdings and that persuaded them to break the agreement. Aquis Entertainment had to pay Oscars a break fee worth 1 million dollars.
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