Of course, there is one obvious party. Novomatic. The Austrian...

Of course, there is one obvious party. Novomatic. The Austrian company operates some 2000 gaming facilities, largely under the Admiral Casino brand, around the world. It also owns just over 50 per cent of Ainsworth.

Crucially, Ainsworth chief executive Harald Neumann was an executive at Novomatic before he took the top job at the ASX-listed group. In the United States on Sunday, Neumann declined to comment when contacted.

After Novomatic, Ainsworth’s largest shareholders include Spheria Asset Management, Allan Gray, REST andHESTA. Its founder, Len Ainsworth, hit the jackpot in 2016 after landing a near-$500 million deal when he sold his majority stake to Novomatic in 2016. Ainsworth was alsothe founder of Aristocrat, which has grown into a $26 billion poker machine giant.

After all this time it looks like AGI will finally be swallowed up by Novamatic.

Aristocrat’s smaller poker machine rival,Ainsworth Game Technology, which trades at a far lower multiple than its larger peer. Now the company appears to be doing something about it, and is in discussions with advisors at Macquarie about setting up a data room to consider whether there’s a suitor that could take it private.

Novomatic’s interest in Ainsworth started in 2013 after Austrian and German authorities began to impose new restrictions on poker machine and casino operators, forcing the company to look offshore for growth.

AsThe Australian Financial Reviewreported at the time, Johann Graf, one of Austria’s richest men and the owner of Novomatic, dispatched his son Thomas Graf and gaming executive Jens Halle to Sydney to Ainsworth’s modest Silverwater headquarters to test the waters for a possible sale

Ainsworth reported revenues of $143.6 million in the six months to June 30, a 20 per cent increase on the prior corresponding period. Profit before tax rose 24 per cent to $23.3 million, the company reported, although write-offs of investments in Argentina affected the post-tax bottom line.

It was a hell of a ride from the lows of 4c. One that we were lucky enough to be on.