Amaya bankers demand poison pill to fend off future Baazov acquisition attempts

Canadian online gambling operator Amaya Gaming has taken steps to ensure that former CEO David Baazov makes no further attempts to buy the company and take it private.

On Friday, Amaya announced that it reached a deal to reprice and retrench its US dollar and Euro-denominated first lien term loans and amended the applicable credit agreement. Amaya, the parent company of online poker giant PokerStars, said it expects the refinancing will save it around US $15.4m in annual interest expense.

Among other things, the amended credit agreement waives the company’s required 2016 and 2017 excess cash flow repayments. This will free up around $48m that Amaya plans to use to pay down its remaining deferred payments to Isai and Mark Scheinberg, from whom Amaya purchased PokerStars in June 2014.

Interestingly, Amaya revealed that the amended credit agreement also “modifies the change of control provision to remove the ability of a certain current shareholder to directly or indirectly acquire control of Amaya without triggering an event of default and potential acceleration of the repayment of the debt under the credit agreement for the first lien term loans.” Amaya said the change was made “at the request of certain lenders.”