Strong speculation in the German market that major arcades company Schmidt Group has been taken over by Austria's Novomatic have been strenuously denied.
The Schmidt Group consists of nearly 150 very up-market arcades, owned by Ulli Schmidt who told InterGame that "under no circumstances would I sell."
The rumours had circulated Germany for some weeks, and were made more pointed by the fact that Ulli Schmidt sits on the board of gaming machine manufacturer Bally Wulff Entertainment, a rival to Novomatic’s German manufacturing subsidiary Löwen.
This week Tim Wittenbecher, managing director of Bally Wulff, told InterGame: "I think that these rumours have been spread by some of our rivals to cause mischief." In fact Novomatic itself, when contacted by InterGame, similarly denied the rumours.
