Canadian online and land-based gaming company, Amaya Gaming, have recently announced that they’ve finally outlined an agreement with Isai Scheinberg and his son Mark over the 197.7 million in deferred payments they owe to the family. The deal was reached just in time before February 1st – the set date for all remaining payments stemming from the sale of Rational Group LTD .
The Scheinbergs were the founders of popular Poker and gambling platforms PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker which were registered under their Rational Group Company. The company and its two main platforms were sold in 2014 to Amaya, who agreed to pay a total of $4.9 billion for the purchase. Per the agreement, Amaya paid $4.5 billion upfront, while the rest ($400 million) was agreed to be paid no later than February 1st, 2017.
Two months ago, Amaya announced that they had approximately half of the owed money available in cash, while they were considering other options to gather the rest. According to their latest press release, the remaining debt was recently agreed to be paid off from unrestricted funds of the company and revenue from its operations.
To reach the agreement, the Scheinbergs had to agree not to enforce their legal right to force Amaya to pay off the debt via “commercially reasonable efforts” that would have involved the issuing of equity. In a reciprocating gesture, Amaya has agreed to pay three months worth of late payment fees in advance on February 1, non-refundable, as well as any other fees should they fail to honor the commitment.
The new deal is one of the few positive news for Amaya recently, who have had a pretty bad year during which their former CEO Baazov was charged with sharing insider trading secrets to his brother and forced to resign, thus out-shadowing the success of their acquisition.