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Report: Tencent taking $3.5 billion loan for Supercell deal

Chinese firm seeks bank support for big money deal

Report: Tencent taking $3.5 billion loan for Supercell deal

Tencent is taking out $3.5 billion in loans as part of its acquisition of Clash Royaledeveloper Supercell.

People “familiar with the matter” claimed to Bloomberg that the Chinese internet company has commitments from 23 banks to make up the money for the deal.

Tencent is expected to seal a huge $8.6 billion majority purchase of Finnish studio Supercell from Softbank.

Big money deal

Rumours first emerged that Softbank was in talks with Tencent to sell its 73% share of Supercell in May last year.

The deal was confirmed just a couple months later. It’s an acquisition that values the Clash of Clans developer at $10.2 billion.

At the time, Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen said: "Tencent's people seem to love games as much as we do.

"In fact, in one of my meetings with Martin [Lau] (their President), he had just dropped out from Clash Royale global top-100 players, and it was almost impossible to get his focus back to the topics we had to discuss…

"Together with Tencent, we can bring our games to so many more players."


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Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.