Chess.com received “yes” from enough owners of the Play Magnus chess company. But competition authorities can still prevent the giant takeover in the chess world.
On 24 August, Chess.com, through a subsidiary, submitted an offer for Play Magnus AS, which valued the latter at NOK 799 million.
Play Magnus (PMG) was founded by Norwegian chess star Magnus Carlsen and is one of the fastest growing companies in Europe. On the last FT 1000-listenan annual ranking organized by the Financial Times of the top 1,000 growing companies in Europe, PMG ranked 27th.
Magnus Carlsen sold his company heavily when it went public two years ago and now owns 8.5% of Play Magnus.
I had to postpone the offer deadline
In August, a unanimous advice from Play Magnus recommended that all shareholders do so accepts Chess.com’s offer.
The offer was NOK 13 per share, nearly 24% higher than what the stock had traded on the exchange prior to the offer.
When the term of the original offer expired on October 5, shareholders with a total holding of 80.7% of the shares of Play Magnus had accepted the offer from Chess.com. The deadline for the offer was therefore postponed to November 2nd. The goal was to get a yes from the shareholders who put together at least 90 percent of the shares. Then the rest of the shareholders can be expected to sell their shares as well.
New deadline 8 December
In a public announcement on November 3, Play Magnus reports that shareholders who own a total of 90.39% of the shares have agreed to sell the company to Chess.com.
However, one obstacle remains:
Several regulators have to give their approval to the acquisition. In the case of large acquisitions like this, it is common for competition authorities in various countries to give their “yes” for acquisitions to take place. Chess.com has extended the offer deadline to December 8 pending such approvals.
Niemann is suing Carlsen and the companies
The acquisition process took place at the same time that Magnus Carlsen was at the center of a great debate about chess cheating.
It all started with Magnus Carlsen retiring from a chess tournament after losing to American Hans Niemann.
Later, Carlsen suggested that the reason was cheating. Hans Niemann responded with suing, among others, Magnus CarlsenChess.com and Play Magnus Group for one billion crowns.
