Caesars’ William Hill takeover hearing rumbles into third week as hedge funds circle

The £2.9bn takeover of William Hill by US casino operator Caesars Entertainment has once again been delayed, as a scheme court hearing into the deal moves into its third week.

Speculation concerning the resolution of the takeover has seen shares in William Hill rise in value to a Monday high of £2.77p per share, with several city hedge funds including Melqart, Sand Grove and TIG understood to have inked share acquisitions.

In its initial offer to buy the London-listed firm Caesars offered a price of just £2.72 per share.

More than 2.8 million shares have been traded on the London Stock Exchange this morning alone since the market opened at 8am.

The completion of the multi-billion-pound deal had been expected to take place on 31 March, despite questions about the deal being raised by shareholders HBK Investments and GWM Asset Management.

In March, HBK issued a letter citing a “strongly held belief” that shareholders voting on the Caesars takeover at an EGM in November 2020 were not given the full facts.

Specifically, that the ability of Caesars to end joint venture US facing operations with Hills in the event of it being outbid by another firm was exaggerated by Hills.

Responding to the claims, Hills strenuously denied any wrongdoing, but the firm would later postpone the court hearing by a day to give HBK time to state its case.

The hearing took place on 31 March, but no final decision has been reached as yet, despite the approval expected to be a formality.

EGR understands the presiding judge on the case has been on holiday, although this has not been confirmed.

Last week, William Hill has successfully concluded an 18-month migration of its land-based datacentres onto the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform.

It is understood the migration cost £4.7m to complete and led to the operator exiting four international datacentres, reducing its datacentre footprint by 70%.