PartyGaming places a bet on Empire Online

The online poker market took a new twist on Thursday as PartyGaming made an aggressive bet to buy rival Empire Online, in a move that would give it control of even more of the chips in the online gambling world.

In early trading, Empire shares jumped more than 11 per cent to 128.25p as a result of the bid and PartyGaming rose 2.4 per cent to 95.5p.

PartyGaming, which operates PartyPoker.com, confirmed that it had made a preliminary, non-binding approach to Empire, which issued a profits warning in October after PartyGaming changed its relationship with “skin” partners, prompting a collapse in the value of Empire’s shares.

http://uk.biz.yahoo.com - 2005-11-04 01:57:30