A Devilish Year at Gala Coral

Gala Coral, parent company of popular online bingo site Gala Bingo, has not had a good year. The firm's CEO, Neil Goulden, was just quoted in a recent media report as saying that "this year has been hell" for the company. The firm just emerged from a painful restructuring resulting in significant losses to existing investors - including a £10 million loss suffered personally by Goulden. This goes a long way towards explaining his characterization of the past year at Gala. The good news is that the restructuring just completed removes £700 million in debt from Gala's balance sheet and puts them in a far more competitive position going into the future.

The recent credit crisis was the genesis of Gala's problems. Being unable to service their debt, Gala found itself also unable to tap the credit markets in order to refinance their debt obligations. At a point, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, and its mezzanine debt was only trading at a paltry 22p on the Pound. When word of the deal allowing Gala to survive was announced, this debt quickly shot up to 70p. Gala has experienced a brutally competitive landscape within the UK bookmaking business, and their brick and mortar bingo business was greatly hit by the new smoking ban. Gala's online bingo site was one of the only bright spots.

Gala Bingo has emerged as one of the most popular bingo sites in the UK. Gala offers a variety of 75-ball and 90-ball bingo games along with free bingo and penny bingo. New players are given a match bonus for initial deposits, and current players are paid a bonus for referring a friend to the site.

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• 2010-06-24 | Gala Bingo Operator Receives Award For Corporate Responsibility
• 2010-06-23 | Gala Bingo Holding Company Completes Debt Restructuring
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