Everyone's A Winner in £20m float

RETAIL sales promotion game Everyone's A Winner is to come to the Alternative Investment Market in a float that will value its new owner at £20m and see a former stuntman at the helm.

Cash shell Chestnut Corporation is buying the Winner game by reversing into its present owner, Felix Corporation, in a deal worth £11.4m in cash upfront, paid for by listing Chestnut on the Stock Exchange.

Chestnut will pay up to another £24m to Felix in shares, depending on profits over the next three years. Felix owners Alasdair Waddell, 45, former chief executive of Lumiere Pictures, and Andrew Egan, a 39-year-old ex-stuntman and sponsorship negotiator, take over as respectively chief executive and executive director.

Chestnut will be chaired by another former Felix director, Michael Neville, a mergers and acquisitions specialist and currently non-executive chairman of AIM-listed Virtue Broadcasting

The game is popping up in retail stores and leisure centres and gives every player a prize worth at least twice the value in goods of the cost of participating. Delivery details give retailers and leisure operators consumer information. Prize suppliers include Dixons, PC World, Currys, B&Q and Woolworths.