Bwin & PartyGaming Merger Completed

Trading began today for the newly formed company bwin.party with the opening share price staring on £1.94 on the London Stock Exchange as Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment Plc.

Bwin, the Austrian based online gaming bookmaker and gaming products company and PartyGaming the Gibraltar based gaming company that boasts in operating the world's largest online casino in terms of active players, have completed their planned merger.

The merger was endorsed by shareholders of both companies, with Bwin shareholders agreeing unanimously to the merger and Party Gaming shareholders approving the merger with majority of 99.4% of shareholder.

The merger has forced several required changes in senior management personal. The new chairman position announced back in October 2010 as being allocated to Simon Duffy can into power today with Duffy taking to role of chairman.

The positions of co-CEOs is being filled by Norbert Teufelberger and Jim Ryan who released a joint statement saying: “We are delighted that our merger is now complete so that we can start with the integration of our businesses and capturing the synergies we have already identified.”

Bwin/Party new board of directors is more or less evenly split between Party Gaming and Bwin members. PartyGaming finance director taking on the role of CFO for the newly formed group and Bwin's COO Joachim Baca maintaining his position for the Bwin.Party.