Saturday 29 May 2021 9:00 am | Updated: Friday 28 May 2021 12:36 pm

Exclusive: Row brewing at Playtech over £148m sale of trade-tech platform Finalto

A shareholder row is brewing at Playtech over the proposed sale of its trade tech platform Finalto, with at least one major investor understood to be disappointed by the £148m selling price.

The tech firm has agreed to offload Finalto to an Israeli consortium as part of efforts to focus in on its core gaming activities.

Finalto, which owns Markets.com, saw EBITDA of $62m (£43m) in the last financial year. The $210m (£148m) deal also includes the transfer of $109m (£76m) working capital.

City PM understands that Playtech have been trying to offload Finalto for two years, with bankers at UBS appointed to find the best deal, but that some investors believe the price should be higher.

Whilst Finalto made healthy profits across the whole of the financial year, much of the money was made in the early part of the pandemic.

The year before, EBITDA came in at $8.9m (£6.2m), and the year before that $36.7m (£25.8m).

The row is likely to come to a head at a mandatory shareholder vote on the transaction.

Investor relations at Playtech have been notoriously testy for a number of years, with revolts over pay and personnel a regular occurrence.

A behind-closed-doors AGM earlier this week saw a number of non-executive director re-appointments hit by sizable rebellions, though all were in fact approved.

Further questions have been asked of Playtech’s incoming chairman, Brian Mattingley, who until the beginning of last year sat on the board of now-collapsed trading platform Football Index.

Mattingley left the board of Football Index in early 2020.

A spokesman for Playtech said the firm was “delighted that someone of Brian’s calibre is joining the Board and look forward to benefitting from his experience to support our continued progress and growth.”