Ladbrokes suitor GVC shares hit after €200m Greek tax ruling
ONLINE gambling giant
GVC pledged to fight a near €200m (£175m) ruling against it by the Greek authorities, claiming the sum is hugely inflated.
The shares initially fell 4pc on the announcement but recovered some of this ground to end just 26.5p, or 2.8pc, lower at 921.5p later in the day.
The company, which is in the process of buying rival Ladbrokes, said its Sportingbet subsidiary has been sent a tax audit by the Greek Audit Centre for Large Enterprises in relation to money it believes the entity owes dating back to 2010 and 2011.
GVC said the sum of €186.7m was “substantially higher by multiples” than the total revenue Sportingbet generated in Greece during those two years.
It also added it bought Sportingbet in 2013 and so any error about tax payments occurred before its ownership of the business.
The company said it had “strong grounds to appeal” but would be paying €7.8m a month for two years into a scheme to allow it to continue trading during the appeal. This meant it has taken a €200m provision in 2017.
Elsewhere, the infrastructure-focused investment trust Hicl became the latest casualty in the Carillion saga. The FTSE 250 company updated the market to confirm the contractor’s demise had triggered loan agreement defaults at projects and management subcontracts equivalent to £50m of its net asset value (equivalent to 2.8p of NAV per share, which is 149p), on top of an earlier £9.4m provision booked at its recent half-year results. The announcement knocked 5pc off the share price but most of the ground was recovered leaving it 6.4p down at £14.61.
The FTSE 100’s resources stocks lagged due to a rise in the greenback on the back of President Donald Trump’s comments that he wanted the dollar to be strong. Copper and silver miners
Antofagasta and Fresnillo slipped 7p to 941p and 2p to £13.69 respectively, while
Anglo American eked out a 1.4p gain to £17.35 and Rio
Tinto added 5p to £39.43. Things were looking rosier for the pound though, with a sharp rise against key currencies to levels not seen in more than 18 months.
The Bank of England’s sterling effective exchange rate index ticked above 80 this week, the highest level since June 2016 when the country voted in favour of leaving the European Union, prompting a large fall in the currency.
The largest faller of the day in the FTSE 100 was private hospital company
Mediclinic, which last year launched an unsuccessful £1.2bn takeover bid for rival Spire, down 18.2p to 611p. Its 2.9pc fall, however, wasn’t enough to offset gains among blue-chip pharmaceutical giants, with the FTSE 100 ending up 49.7 points at 7,665.54. Late-stage trials for
Astrazeneca’s COPD inhaler helped it up 96.5p to £50.95, while rival GSK added 20p to £13.55 after getting a positive opinion on its shingles vaccine.
Things got worse for LED maker Luceco, whose shares plummeted in December on the back of a profit warning. The stock fell a further 7.4p to 79.4p a share putting more downward pressure on its now £139m market capitalisation.