Gala Bingo Rescued from Collapse
It has been widely reported over the past few months that Gala Bingo have been fighting a multi million pound dept pile and their company was under certain threat of collapse if an agreement could not be met with its lenders.
Well it now looks like the Gala Coral group, owners of (Gala Bingo) can breathe a sigh of relief as the (Times Online) learnt last week that lenders have now agreed a to a re-financing deal which will cut their dept from a whopping £2.6 billion, down to £1.85 billion.
As you can see the dept pile Gala Bingo were sitting under was definitely not pocket change, in fact you could say they were talking more in telephone numbers! It was good to read that the Gala Coral group have now been rescued from certain collapse, as this has saved the jobs of thousands of people within the UK and abroad come to that.
Plus the gaming scene would just not be the same without Gala Coral in it. Our high street shops were hit hard by the recession and as we know Woolworths went into administration and had to close down all their branches. This sent shock waves throughout the UK and I would imagine the same would happen if we had lost Gala Bingo clubs for good.
Along with many bingo clubs of course, the Gala Coral group also owns a string of casinos and betting shops and with the new restructuring plans going ahead these will now all fall under the control of (mezzanine) finance providers and they are led by Apollo Management, Cerberus Capital Management, Goldman Sachs and Park Square Capital.
This will also result in Apollo becoming the biggest shareholder of the Gala Coral group, with a 25% stake. The biggest loser in this deal between Gala Coral lenders has got to be (Permira). An insider told the Times online that Permira could be down as much as £500 million pounds. Makes your eyes water doesn’t it? Prermia never got the opportunity to take any money out of the business and their bet on Gala Coral most certainly did not pay off.
