Playtech is delighted with its $105 million acquisition of CDF trading company AvaTrade.
Online gambling software giant Playtech has announced that it’s going to acquire the currency-trading platform AvaTrade for $105 million.
The move is the latest in a string of online trading business acquisitions by Playtech as it seeks to diversify its offering beyond its casino, activities betting and poker operations, at a time when the on the web gambling industry is coming under stricter regulatory and burden that is fiscal.
In Playtech bought Plus500 for £460 million ($718 million) february.
Plus500, like AvaTrade, in a ‘contract-for-difference’ (CFD) broker that allows customers to speculate on markets and trade on motions of the selling price without owning those assets.
In April this year, Playtech acquired TradeFX, a trading platform and payment services provider, for €208 million ($230 million).
Two Million Trades per Month
Founded in 2006, AvaTrade has 20,000 registered customers who execute more than two million trades per month. The business’s total trading volumes surpass $60 billion per according to its website month.
‘The Ava Group is just a well-recognized and established online CFD broker with multiple regulatory licenses and a strong customer base with insignificant geographic overlap with the TradeFX Group,’ said Mor Weizer, CEO of Playtech. ‘We are very excited concerning the opportunities for the Group arising from the mixture of the Trade FX Group and the Ava Group which we are confident will deliver term that is long for Shareholders.’
‘The acquisition of the Ava Group is another milestone that is important Playtech’s technique to expand and enhance its overall technology offering through multiple vertical markets,’ he added. ‘Since the present earnings-enhancing acquisition of TradeFX and the creation of our financials division we have desired further opportunities to broaden our reach into this vertical.’
Optimal Strategy
Meanwhile, Optimal Payments has announced that it expects to complete its acquisition of rival on line payment provider Skrill by the end of the month.
The business will acquire Skrill in a reverse takeover deal for €720 million ($799.7 million) and 37,493,053 new ordinary shares.
‘Completion of the acquisition of Skrill continues to be at the mercy of regulatory free online indian dreaming slot machine approval by great britain’s Financial Conduct Authority, which is anticipated to be made no later than 30 July 2015, unless the FCA workouts its statutory right to interrupt the consideration period,’ Optimal said in a statement that is official. ‘Completion of the acquisition will take place soon after the receipt of FCA approval.’
Optimal said the deal will be ‘transformational and value enhancing’ for the company, helping it to become the ‘leading payment and wallet that is digital with significant international scale and reach.’
Jackpot Digital Buys PokerTek
Finally, capping down a busy week for the industry’s M&A lawyers, pc software provider Jackpot Digital has announced a deal which will see it obtain all the assets of PokerTek from Multimedia for $5.4 million.
PokerTek, which builds electronic table games, has generated approximately $3.5 million within the last 12 months, and Jackpot Digital said the integration of its existing platform aided by the acquired assets would ultimately enhance user-experience and increase income for the company.
New Jersey Online DDoS Attacks on Regulated Sites Arrive with Bitcoin Ransom Notes
Current nj-new Jersey DDoS assaults on unnamed regulated sites had been followed by a ransom note future that is promising more severe attacks should businesses not comply. (Image: rodin.com.au)
DDoS (distributed denial of solution) is not a reality that any gaming that is online ever wants to handle, many regulated New Jersey internet sites had to do exactly that last week.
New Jersey’s fledgling online gambling industry is targeted, apparently for the time that is first by these distributed attacks.
Late week that is last at least four unnamed sites had been derailed by a hacker, or hackers, who flooded the sites’ bandwidths with traffic, making them inoperable, and ultimately taking them offline for around half an hour.
The attacks were accompanied by a ransom note for an undisclosed sum, payable in Bitcoin, with a risk of a more serious attack to follow.
Not New, But Frustrating
DDoS attacks aren’t anything new for the gambling that is online, of course. In fact, they are as old as the industry itself, but there are suggestions that incidents of the unwelcome actions have been growing. Some experts even claim that attacks across all industries that are online doubled in 2014.
High-profile operators on the receiving end a year ago included Betfair, which was targeted on Grand National day, the biggest UK horse race meet of the year in terms of betting.
Attackers usually time their efforts to coincide with big events that are sporting the hope that operators will merely pay up instead than lose business. PokerStars, Unibet, and Swedish state gambling monopoly Svenska Spel are all recent victims.
Chances of Prosecution Slim
Inspite of the initial interruption, it appears that the situation has become stable and has been effectively dealt with by the latest Jersey market’s cybersecurity teams. The battle between online gambling sites and the hackers is one of cat and mouse, of strategy and counterstrategy: as safety technology improves, so do the hackers’ efforts to breach it.
Nj Division of Gaming Enforcement President David Rebuck said this week that the matter was now being examined by state police, the FBI, and the latest Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, also as his own organization. The various agencies, he stated, were hunting a ‘known actor’ who had ‘done this before.’
Opportunities of prosecution are slim, however. To date, only two men have been convicted for launching DDoS attacks. Those were two UK-based Poles who made the blunder of threatening an operator they knew really and agreeing to meet up him in a hotel room. The operator, of course, brought the police with him. In 2013, the hapless pair were sentenced to 5 years in jail by a court in britain.
LVS Attack
Such assaults are maybe not limited to online gambling, of program. In February 2014, Las Vegas Sands Corporation (LVS), owned by anti-online curmudgeon Sheldon Adelson, was afflicted by a massive cyber attack that ended up being thought to possess emanated from Iran. On 10, LVS was plunged into chaos as computers began flatlining and servers shutting down february. Difficult drives were wiped clean as spyware ripped through the business’s networks.
The decision was taken to sever the multibillion dollar operation completely from the Internet as hackers began compressing and downloading batches of sensitive files, comprising everything from high-roller credit checks to details of global computer systems.
The attack caused an estimated $20 million worth of damage. The attackers subsequently claimed their DDoS actions was in fact been prompted after hearing remarks made by Adelson in 2013 about ‘dropping the bomb’ on Iran.
NY Casino License Bidding Process Receives One Applicant
Tiago Downs, the bidder that is sole the 4th NY casino license, proposes an improved expansion package having didn’t impress last December. (Image: weny.com)
Regulators in New York State have actually slim pickings whenever they come to select the champion of the 4th Upstate casino license in the economically deprived Southern Tier region.
Just one contender presented a proposition for Monday’s deadline, while a rival pulled out at the minute that is last.
The Tioga Downs racino in Nichols is the one and only applicant for the area, with a $195 million expansion proposal to its current facility.
The aborted proposition, from businessman Jeffrey C. Hyman, had been pulled having been dealt ‘a fatal blow’ by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
Hyman said his task would have been ‘seismic,’ which may have been what the environmental people had been complaining about in the beginning, particularly when you consider there is an ongoing debate about fracking in the area.
Snubbed
Unfortunately, Jeff Gural, owner of Tioga Downs, did not impress the Gaming Control Board during the original licensing hearing with his project in December 2014, although he has since come up having an package that is improved.
Back then, the board recommended three casino licenses, for Monticello, in the Catskills; Schenectady; and the Finger Lakes area, snubbing the Southern Tier and Tioga Downs completely, despite having been granted the powers to recommend a 4th permit.
Gural was furious at the choice and very critical for the board. He argued that a casino in the Southern Tier would be perfectly logical, because the closest competitor is Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, 90 miles south in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
‘It’s got nothing to do with me, i’ve enough money,’ he fumed. ‘ But the individuals for the Southern Tier?’
‘And what really pisses me off,’ he continued, warming to his theme, ‘is the governor asked me to spend $800,000 of my cash to pass law that is local, Proposition One [on the expansion of casino gaming]. What was that all about? I mean… the entire thing is sickening to tell the truth with you.’
Outcry
Such had been the outcry among locals, in fact, that Governor Andrew Cuomo intervened, asking for that the Gaming Commission reconsider.
‘As this would function as the last license released in New York State, it may excite national competition by interested events that submit better yet applications than initial round,’ recommended Cuomo. ‘If you agree for this request, the [casino board] should quickly establish a process for the 4th license that could be complete as expeditiously possible, because the Southern Tier needs jobs and investment now.’
The board complied, a decision it might now regret, because it discovers itself dealing with a ‘bidding war’ of just one and under political pressure to award a permit to a person who has been extremely critical of its decision making processes.