GAME: No rush over Gamestation integration

The leading games retailer can begin the integration of the two companies in earnest after the Competition Commission finally approved GAME’s 74 million acquisition of Gamestation – but that doesn’t mean a summer of major upheaval, said deputy CEO and group finance director David Thomas.

We’ll start to implement the integration in the second full year – post May 2008,” he told MCV. It’s a situation where once you get to September, you have to ensure that the business is in good shape and everything is ready for Christmas.

So we have a window between now and September 2008 to undertake some elements of the integration, and then we would expect further elements of integration will roll into 2009.”

As GAME Group celebrated a phenomenal Christmas of record-breaking sales, CEO Lisa Morgan added that she has nothing but praise for the Gamestation team: I think it’s a real credit to the Gamestation business that while all this uncertainly has been going on, they’ve put 100 per cent focus and passion into delivering record breaking results.”