Japan’s Softbank has sold its entire 10.6 per cent stake in betting group Betfair – at very much a sub-par price.
This comes a couple of months after Betfair managed to evade a £1bn bid to take over the company.
Softbank had backed the 975p per share bid by the private equity company CVC and a 6.4 per cent shareholder, Richard Koch. Now it has sold its 11 million shares at 807p each to Deutsche Bank, which then sold off the holding to institutional investors.
The effect was to drop the Betfair shares by 39.5 to 840p.
Softbank had bought the Betfair shares at £13.20 in early 2006, which made it a bad investment for the company.
