Greece’s ailing privatisation drive has received a boost after the designated buyer for its OPAP stake confirmed it would proceed with the deal, leaving negotiations over a conflicted lottery contract to a later date.
Emma Delta, a fund backed by Greek shipping magnate George Melisanidis and Czech businessman Jiri Smejc, agreed in May to pay €652m for the Greek state’s 33% stake in the betting and gaming monopoly. However, the head of Greece’s privatisation agency Stelios Stavridis warned last week that the deal was in danger of collapse after Emma Delta insisted a 12-year lottery contract between OPAP and a consortium including providers Intralot and Sci Games be renegotiated.
Smejc however told Reuters this week that the yet-to-be-finalised contract “would not cause any delay in the privatisation process”, and that he expected to the deal to complete in September.
Emma Delta is also understood to lack comfort with Intralot and Sci Games’ associated power of veto over OPAP’s decisions on the running of lotteries, and will also ask for this to be reviewed.
Greece failing to get the OPAP acquisition across the finish line was seen by analysts as a potentially major blow to getting its much-fanfared privatisation drive off the ground. HRADF failed last monty to find a buyer for natural gas company DEPA.
OPAP, the most profitable of the businesses being put up for sale by the Greek government, was seen as one of the crown jewels in the Greek state’s fire sale of approximately €2.6bn of assets this year.
The Greek government recently notified the EC of amendments to its Gambling Law which would restrict online betting and most other online games to monopoly OPAP, which has an agreement with GTECH’s online gambling supply arm Spielo G2 to power its platform.
EU regulators however recently extended their review of Greece’s plans by a month after receiving a detailed opinion from dot.com licensing hub Malta and also issuing their own. Greece now has to respond to the EC on what action it plans to take on the points raised by the submissions.
Betfair and William Hill also applied this week to run the online monopoly set to be handed to OPAP, in a lobby group-led move designed to expose the lack of an open, competitive and transparent tender process, in apparent breach of EU law.
This followed OPAP’s monopoly being ruled to be illegal as currently operated by Europe’s highest court, the CJEU, in January, in joined cases brought by William Hill, Sportingbet and Stanleybet. There are now five outstanding complaints lodged against OPAP’s monopoly, four with the EC, another with the Greek Council of State.
Article written by Katy Stirland
