Blackstone wants to create a giant of the game with the fusion of Codere and Cirsa

• The dream of Blackstone was to group Codere, Cirsa and Luckia into one company


•  The staff of the resulting company would lose 2,000 employees


• Blackstone discard buying Luckia

Manuel Lao, historical owner of Cirsa, sold the company to Blackstone in the spring of this year for just under 2,000 million euros, according to knowledgeable sources. An amount that, in addition, included the debt of the group, which hovered around 950 million. For its part, Blackstone controls Codere since in 2013 it acquired its debt, not without controversy, for 100 million euros from Credit Suisse, BBVA and Barclays. However, Blackstone's intention is to enter into its shareholding.

Now, Blackstone is looking for a way to convince the rest of the shareholders of the positive that would result from a merger between two gaming companies. However, the reluctance of the Martínez Sampedro and the whole workforce, which could lose up to 2,000 employees with the operation due to duplicities and closures of branches, means that the project of the North American fund has, at the moment, several obstacles to jump.

But the truth is that the funds that control Codere and Cirsa, like everyone else, simply and profitably seek profitability. And a fusion of these characteristics would kill two birds with one stone: they would save costs by approximately 100 million euros and eliminate direct competition.

The dream of Blackstone was to group Codere, Cirsa and Luckia into one company, but given the owners' refusal to sell, the US fund has turned around, although without forgetting its project, which will now be a fusion of two.

The game group Codere obtained a net profit of 2.8 million euros last year, compared to the losses of 1,121.7 million registered in 2016. While the gaming multinational Cirsa, the first Spanish company in the gaming sector and leisure, in 2017 it obtained an operating profit of 427 million euros, 7.2% more than in 2016.