Italian lottery company GTECH SpA is buying International Game
Technology, a Las Vegas-based maker of casino equipment, in a deal
valued at $6.4 billion, the companies said Wednesday.
Rome-based GTECH operates lottery games world-wide, including
the Lotto game in Italy and several state lotteries in the U.S. The
deal with IGT, which consists of $4.7 billion in cash and stock as
well as $1.7 billion in IGT debt, will create a much larger global
gaming company that covers multiple aspects of the gambling market,
the firms said.
As a result of this transaction, GTECH and IGT will merge under
a new holding company based in the U.K., they said.
Last month, GTECH said it had begun preliminary talks to buy
IGT. But at the time, private-equity firm Carlyle Group was also in
talks about buying IGT, a person familiar with the discussions told
The Wall Street Journal.
The combined entity would have over $6 billion in revenue, the
companies said. In April, IGT said its net income for the fiscal
second quarter ended March 31 dropped 67% to $25.7 million from a
year earlier, while revenue fell 15% to $513 million on weaker
sales of slot machines.
Write to Juro Osawa at juro.osawa@wsj.com
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