From Fox Business News
Greece’s government Wednesday accepted a 652 million euro ($860.3 million) bid for the state gambling company OPAP SA (GRKZF, OPAP.AT), marking the first significant asset sale in the country’s long-delayed privatization program.
In a statement, Greece’s privatization agency said that a Czech-led private equity consortium, Emma Delta, had won the bid for the acquisition of a 33% stake of OPAP, after improving its earlier bid by EUR30 million to meet the government’s minimum target price.
Greece will also retain 2012 dividends from the company, equal to EUR60 million, bringing the total bid up to EUR712 million, the statement adds.
“The first big privatization in our country was completed successfully today,” finance minister Yannis Stournaras said in a statement.
The Emma Delta consortium is 66.7% owned by Jiri Smejc, a partner in Czech private-equity fund PPF, and 33.3% owned by Greek businessman George Melissanidis, analysts say.
The bid needs to be reviewed by Greece’s Court of Auditors, the agency said, a procedure that could take several weeks.
OPAP marks the first significant privatization Greece has undertaken since the start of the crisis in 2009. The state-backed gambling monopoly–together with gas company DEPA–constitute two of the jewels in the country’s privatization program, analysts say. But despite that, OPAP drew only two final bidders and the price of the final bid was at the low end of what the government hoped to receive.
