There were rumors about this merger for several months. Now Bwin and PartyGaming – both giants in the gambling industry – announced this merger in a press release. The new company will be listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2011 and it will be the biggest corporate conglomerate in the history of online gambling.

Bwin is a company from Austria and is primarily known for its offers in the betting sector; but it also has a poker room. The offices of PartyGaming are in Gibraltar and PartyGaming is primarily known for its poker room PartyPoker. Together, these two companies will probably be the poker room with the 3rd highest player traffic in the internet, on the heels of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.

In the year 2009 Bwin and PartyGaming had a value of 682 million in total. After this merger was announced publicly the value of the shares of both companies increased by 17%. The merger includes that Bwin will hold 51.64% of the new company. Therefore, the shareholders will get 12.23 shares of PartyGaming for every share of Bwin.

The merger is the highlight of a series of mergers that took place in the previous years. PartyGaming took over Foxy Bingo in July 2009; shortly after PartyGaming took over WPT Enterprises, the organizer of the World Poker Tour. Bwin took over another gambling company in 2009: Gioco Digitale, an Italian poker room.

Norbert Teufelberg, one of the CEOs of Bwin, stated in a press release: “This merger of two equal companies is perfect under strategical, operational and financial aspects.” Jim Ryan, the CEO of PartyGaming, was also very enthusiastic: “This is a possibility for transformation for both of our companies and we will create the biggest gambling company of the world that is listed on any stock exchange.”