GAME Franchise Sale Update

As many of you now know GAME have put themselves up for sale follow their banks decision to cut up from funding on new releases. It has now been on a few days and the rumour mill has already kicked off with who is interested in taking over. 

Among these are OpCapita whom have reportly made a firm offer for the retailer. Mentioned in The Times, it has been proposed to have offered to buy out GAME’s lenders and pay-off debts with all their suppliers. There’s no word yet on whether the offer was accepted but I’m sure we will hear something soon.

OpCapita own the retail restructuring company Hilco and Comet and the rumour mill suggests that they may be interest in GAME’s international operations and not their UK stores.

Another report published yesterday by MCV confirmed that investment fund Blueshore Global Equity has already purchased an 8.35% stake in the retailer. The chances are that they have hoped to make some money on their purchase through a future buy-out and share price bump.

The more interest being shown the better GAMES share prices become; in particularly the recent offer from OpCapita has seen a 72% increase to 1.95 pence much to the delight of Blueshore’s recent acquisition.

Other rumours doing the circuits include a report that US mega franchise Walmart are also interested in the games vendor. In fact these reports have suggested that contact has already been made about a possible future offer.

Walmart currently own UK supermarket ASDA so this might just be an attempt to hoover up consumers or take over certain outlets. So far Walmart have declined to comment on this speculation.

The US game retailer GameStop is still widely publicized as the front-runner to swoop in but reports suggest that they are waiting for GAME to enter administration first.

Interestingly The GAME Group is a PLC so any serious buy-out discussions will need to be disclosed.

All this will likely come to the boil next week when GAME’s quarterly rental payments are due. If they are unable to pay these then they will fall into administration. From their perspective a sale would be better before the rental date of 25^th March comes around.

If any further news occurs I will certainly keep you posted.