The Tatts Group’s shareholders have overwhelmingly voted in favour of the proposed merger with Tabcorp.
The shareholder meeting, which was held in Brisbane yesterday, saw 98.64 per cent of the votes cast by Tatts shareholders being in favour of the deal. The vote means that Tatts has now applied to the Supreme Court of Victoria for approval for the deal, with the Court hearing scheduled for today.
In a statement Tatts said: “Tatts will announce the Court’s ruling to ASX, and should the Court approve the Scheme and the Scheme become effective, it is intended that Tatts shares will be suspended from trading on ASX from the close of trading on 13 December 2017.”
The deal has already been through several stages after the Australian Competition Tribunal (ACT) approved the merger in June, only for that ruling to be appealed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and CrownBet. https://theshout.com.au/news/accc-appeal-tabcorp-tatts-merger/
The appeal was heard last month, with the ACT giving the go-ahead again, saying that the $11bn merger will bring ‘greater competition’.
Part of the ACT’s ruling said that the deal could go ahead, subject to Tabcorp divesting its Odyssey Gaming Services business. Yesterday Tabcorp announced that it had completed that sale to Australian National Hotels Pty Ltd (ANH).
Tabcorp said that it had “agreed to divest Odyssey as part of the process for securing authorisation for the proposed combination of Tabcorp and Tatts Group Limited from the ACT.
“The divestment of Odyssey was conditional on the proposed combination becoming effective. Both Tabcorp and ANH have waived this condition to allow for the transfer of the business prior to the Christmas period.”
Tatts said it would announce the Supreme Court’s verdict as soon as it was given, but that ruling has not been revealed at the time of this story being published.