Golden Gaming continues to absorb its competitors. Its latest acquisition is Lakes Entertainment, one of the most venerable names in Midwestern gambling. Golden will pay a 
37% premium to purchase Lakes at $9.57 a share. While 64% of shareholders will be Lakes ones, the power shift is decisively in Golden’s favor. The latter’s Blake Sartini (right) becomes CEO and chairman of the merged, publicly traded company, Golden Entertainment (and receives 7.8 million shares of stock), while longtime Lakes CEO Lyle Berman moves down to board member and consultant. A similar arrangement will be made for Lakes CFO Tim Cope.
The merger brings Golden’s already-considerable slot inventory to 9,250 one-armed bandits in over 600 locations, virtually all in Nevada. It also puts Golden in the driver’s seat of Maryland‘s Rocky Gap Casino, giving it an East Coast presence for the first time. Golden is projecting $348 million in revenue this year. There’s some addition-by-subtraction in the deal: Golden will divest 10% interests in Horseshoe Cleveland and Horseshoe Cincinnati. It will also unload a pair of horse tracks, one in Ohio and one in Kentucky, for a mere $750,000.
* Scientific Games is very much in the news today. It has inked a pact with Carnival Cruise Line to offer iOS– and Android-enabled mobile games. This is Scientific’s first big deal since last autumn’s absorption of Bally Technologies. And since the agreement could put Scientific software aboard 100-plus ships, it’s definitely something to crow about.
It was also announced that New York City-based Scientific will pull up stakes and move to 
Las Vegas. The shift will put Scientific into an otherwise-redundant Bally manufacturing building. The company is also in the process of winding down the Waukegan, Illinois manufacturing operations of its other prize acquisition, WMS Industries. Scientific plans to invest another $5 million in local construction, including a 400,000-square-foot soundstage. To this end, it has obtained $2.5 million worth of construction incentives from the State of Nevada.
The move doesn’t mean complete centralization of Scientific’s operations. “WMS game development, engineering, support operations the interactive division, will continue to be based in Chicago,” reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “The operational headquarters of Scientific Games’ lottery division will remain in Georgia.”
