Full Tilt Takeover - Tapie Group Out, PokerStars In? [+ GBT Repayment Details]

Groupe Bernard Tapie's Full Tilt Poker buyout deal is off. Additionally, several sources are reporting that PokerStars has reached an agreement with the United States to purchase Full Tilt.

Numerous sources have reported that Groupe Bernard Tapie's involvement with a possible takeover deal of Full Tilt Poker has come to a close. PokerStrategy.com can independently confirm this.

On Twitter, iGaming France stated "Laurent Tapie confirms deal is off for FTP buyout, insinuates external sabotage over DOJ [negotiations]."

PokerStars Involved?

Earlier today, a post on the TwoPlusTwo forums stated:

"PokerStars has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to buy FTP. The things I heard:

• All players will be refunded 100%
• Both sites back online
• Both sites have promotions
• Employees remain in both places

Expect more news today."

Alexandre Dreyfus, the CEO of Chilipoker, tweeted "PokerStars buys Full Tilt for a consideration of $750m, including settlement with DOJ and full balances of players ($330m). I'm impressed."

GBT Statement

Here is Groupe Bernard Tapie's official statement, originally posted on iGaming Post: 

"Groupe Bernard Tapie regrets to announce that, after seven months of intensive work, our efforts to obtain final approval of the United States Department of Justice of the agreement to acquire the assets of Full Tilt Poker have ended without success.

Ultimately, the deal failed due to two major issues.

The parties could not agree on a plan for repayment of ROW players.

GBT proposed a plan that would have resulted in immediate reinstatement of all ROW player balances, with a right to withdraw those funds over time, based on the size of the player balance and the extent of the player’s playing activity on the re-launched site. All players would have been permitted complete withdrawal of their balances, regardless of whether they played on the site, by a date certain, and 94.9% of ROW players would have been fully repaid on day 1. DOJ ultimately insisted on full repayment with right of withdrawal within 90 days for all players– a surprise demand made in the 11th hour, after months of good-faith negotiations by GBT.

The legal complications surrounding the deal – specifically, questions surrounding the legality of the forfeiture under non-US laws – also proved unresolvable.

All of the key assets of the FTP companies reside outside of the United States. A non-US court well might regard the purported forfeiture as a “fraudulent transaction” and declare it invalid or deem the acquirer of the assets responsible for all of those creditor obligations.

Given the $80 million purchase price, and the substantial amount of cash needed to relaunch FTP, those issues ultimately proved too substantial to overcome.

GBT is very conscious of the hopes it has created – among FTP employees that they will retain their jobs, among FTP players that they will recover their balances, and among the entire poker community that the world’s finest poker platform will be relaunched and bring a needed added element of competition to a world market that today is fully dominated by a single operator.

GBT cannot accept the end of those hopes.

For that reason, unless a concrete and legally viable solution is found in the very coming days to save the employees and repay the players of FTP, we will move to our own plan of action.

We understand from press reports that the DOJ may have entered into an agreement with PokerStars pursuant to which PokerStars will acquire the FTP assets. 
If accurate, we can only assume that PokerStars determined that it was willing to accept these legal and financial risks in order to resolve its own legal situation with DOJ.

 If a PokerStars acquisition of FTP means that all FTP players will be fully repaid immediately, we are very happy for the players, as their final and full repayment has always been our priority.

We only regret that such a deal would signal further consolidation of a poker market already dominated by a single player – an outcome that may raise antitrust concerns and that, in the long run, is probably not good for players and for the whole online poker industry.”

Tapie Lawyer Comments to PokerStrategy.com

Behnam Dayanim, an attorney for Groupe Bernard Tapie, made several comments to PokerStrategy.com explaining the situation from his perspective. He discussed two reasons why the GBT deal fell through, and he commented on why PokerStars might be okay with taking on certain risks that GBT was uncomfortable with.

Shaun Deeb Post

Legendary online tournament grinder Shaun Deeb has written a post on the TwoPlusTwo forums suggesting some terms of a PokerStars takeover deal:

"Anyways the deal is already done by what I am told;

Players will be paid within 90 days
FTP will be open in the US market
Isai [Scheinberg] will be stepping down from the company

If these statements are true I feel that Isai deserves all our thanks + business in the future with his company he is bailing out the igaming industry's tarnished reputation"

Please take into account that although Deeb is a respected figure in the poker world, this information may still be innacurate or exaggerated.

PokerStars Statement

On PokerStarsBlog.com, PokerStars released the following brief statement:

"We've had a lot of enquiries and there's lots of speculation on the forums, so I wanted to address the PokerStars chatter. As you know, PokerStars is in settlement discussions with the U.S. Department of Justice. As such settlement discussions are always confidential, we are unable to comment on rumors. As soon as we have information to share publicly we will do so."

The statement was attributed to Eric Hollreiser, Head of Corporate Communications for PokerStars.

FTP Attorney comment

FTP attorney Barry Boss, of Cozen O’Connor, offered the following statement to DiamondFlushPoker:
“To address issues reported today in the media and on blogs, Full Tilt Poker confirms that its agreement with Groupe Bernard Tapie has in fact been terminated.  Despite this development, Full Tilt Poker is more optimistic than ever that its number one goal will be obtained: Full Tilt players will be repaid. Full Tilt Poker has been in settlement discussions with the US Department of Justice.  As such settlement discussions are always confidential, we are unable to comment on any rumors related to the details of those discussions.  As soon as we have information to share publicly we will do so.”

Diamond Flush Poker Reveals GBT Repayment Plan

Diamond Flush Poker, an offshoot of Subject: Poker, has published an article dissecting much of the information in GBT's public statement (see above). The article includes GBT's early plans for player repayment as well as how their later plans looked after the DOJ objected to some of their original ideas.

The overall implication of the article is that GBT was exceptionally thrifty and attempted to pay as little as humanly possible for Full Tilt's assets, even if that meant making players wait lengthy periods of times before they could actually claim their funds. It is possible that the DOJ chose to muscle GBT out of negotiations for these reasons.

PokerStrategy.com will continue to update this page as additional information becomes available.

by Matt Kaufman