-
02-Sep-2021
Espelkamp
Company
Antitrust authorities approve purchase of NRW casinos by the Gauselmann Group
The tender procedure of the WestSpiel Group, which ended in mid-July, has now been officially completed: All competent antitrust authorities haveapproved the sale. WestSpiel can be acquired by the East-Westphalian Gauselmann Group on 1 September 2021.
The purchase agreement between NRW.BANK and the Gauselmann Group for the acquisition of the casinos in NRW was signed on 20 July. Following antitrust approval, the official acquisition will now take place on 1 September 2021. The casinos in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) will thus become the latest member of the Gauselmann Group. The family-owned company can thus expand its casino portfolio to include the locations of Aachen, Bad Oeynhausen, Dortmund-Hohensyburg and Duisburg and additionally has the option to open two more venues in NRW.
“We are looking forward to welcoming the new employees to our company. We will align the casinos in NRW even more successfully”, says company founder and Chairman of the Management Board Paul Gauselmann. We intensively used the time between the signing of the purchase agreement and the final approval by the antitrust authorities to prepare for the integration of the casinos into the corporate group. Besides technical and organisational aspects, a particular emphasis was placed on personally introducing the management to colleagues in the casino locations as well as in the headquarters in Duisburg. We will further intensify this dialogue in the coming weeks and have planned welcome events for all new colleagues in our training centre at Schloss Benkhausen”, says David Schnabel, Managing Director of Merkur Spielbanken.
About the Gauselmann Group
The Gauselmann Group is a family-run, internationally active corporate group in the entertainment and leisure-time industry. Under its MERKUR brand, the company has consistently stood for enjoyment of gaming for over 60 years. Besides games development, system solutions and the production and sale of amusement machines and money management systems, the group runs the MERKUR CASINO arcade chain and is also active in the areas of sports betting, online gaming and casinos. In the pre-COVID year of 2019, the Gauselmann Group, with its approximately 14,000 employees worldwide and approximately 220 apprentices, generated cumulative sales revenues of around EUR 3.5 billion.
The Gauselmann Group has been very successfully operating modern arcades in Germany and Europe since 1974. In 2013, the corporate group, in cooperation with the Swiss company Stadtcasino Baden AG, participated for the first time in the call for tenders for the casino franchise for the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. The German-Swiss joint venture won out against four other interested parties and quickly went on to open its first own venue in Leuna-Günthersdorf at the end of 2014. Two further casinos followed one after the other – in Magdeburg and Halle (Saale).
In addition, the Gauselmann Group has had a stake in Spielbank Berlin with its four venues since 2016 and also in three casinos in Rhineland Palatinate since 2019. Alongside these (currently ten) casino locations, the international ship casinos on the “Mein Schiff” TUI cruise liners also belong to the corporate group.