Playtech PLC (LON:PTEC) has sold its entire 10% shareholding in online trading platform Plus500 Limited (LON:PLUS) for about £176mln, giving no details on the buyer.
The announcement comes a day after a group of individual founding shareholders in Israel-based Plus500 sold an 8% stake in the company, at a price of 1,550p each, citing "significant demand from a small number of institutional investors".
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Playtech, best known as a gambling software maker, said it had sold 11.4mln Plus500 ordinary shares, also at a price of 1,550p each, representing about 9.99% of Plus500's issued share capital. Plus500 shares closed trade on Thursday at 1,608p.
The FTSE 250-listed group - which also owns Markets.com - said the share sale will not impact its entitlement to the interim dividend announced by Plus500 on August 13 - which equates to about US$16mln.
Playtech added that the sale proceeds will be used to reduce debt and other corporate purposes.
Plus500 which provides an online platform for retail investors to make bets on financial markets through contracts for differences said on Thursday that after the stake sale by its founders, Alon Gonen, Gal Haber, Elad Ben-Izhak, Omer Elazari and Shlomi Weizmann, they would still own about 8% of the company.