Candle Lake offers to buy online casino firm Evolution for $14 billion (updated)
UPDATE 1-Candle Lake offers to buy online casino firm Evolution for $14 billion Updates with context in paragraph 2, details on the offer, analyst comment and shares in bullet point summary.
Aug 13 (Reuters) - Candle Lake has offered to buy Swedish online casino provider Evolution EVOG.ST for about 131.7 billion Swedish crowns ($13.8 billion), or 695 crowns per share, the investment firm owned by billionaire Kenneth Dart said on Thursday.
Cayman Islands-registered Candle Lake last month disclosed a holding of just above 30% of the shares and votes in Evolution, triggering an obligation to launch an offer for the remaining shares.
The offer marks a discount of 5.7% to Evolution's closing price of 737.2 crowns on Wednesday
Candle Lake said it had made the bid due to the offer obligation but did not intend to buy all Evolution shares
"The bid does seem to imply that Candle Lake would like to own more shares in Evolution," Jefferies said
Evolution declined to comment on the offer when contacted by Reuters
Evolution shares were down around 1% by midday in Stockholm
($1 = 9.5608 Swedish crowns)
(Reporting by Ananya Palyekar in Bengaluru and Alexander Klyve Gudbrandsen in Gdansk; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Milla Nissi-Prussak)
((Ananya.Palyekar@thomsonreuters.com ))