Eyes down as Buckingham Bingo sold
TROUBLED North West bingo halls operator Buckingham has been broken up and sold, ending several years of uncertainty over its future.
The Manchester company has been acquired by Club3000 – which has taken seven sites – and Castle Leisure which has bought two.
Buckingham Bingo was founded in Preston in 1970 and was latterly in the hands of a specialist London-based restructuring division of Barclays Ventures.
It ran into trouble after a £90m leveraged buyout in 2005 by Alchemy Partners from founder Panico Panayi. Following the deal, trading and profitability slumped as they were hit by the smoking ban and tax changes to gaming machines.
The sale of the business was led by KPMG Corporate Finance in Manchester.
Club3000 has acquired the bingo halls in Middleton, Old Trafford, Walkden, Peterlee, Bradford, Preston and Huyton Castle Leisure has acquired the clubs in Corby and Bootle.
Jonathan Boyers, head of corporate finance at KPMG in the North, said: “Buckingham Bingo is a profitable business with a high-quality bingo estate and the sale process that we conducted attracted a high level of interest from potential purchasers.
“This renewed appetite for quality assets represents welcome news for existing bingo operators, in a market that has been impacted in recent years by the smoking ban and other well-documented legislative changes.”
Law firm DLA Piper advised Buckingham Bingo on the sale.
