Kenneth Dart triggers Evolution mandatory bid after crossing 30%
Candle Lake’s deadline falls around 21 August, while Dart’s near-30% interest in Flutter Entertainment is structured to avoid a parallel Irish bid obligation.
Crossing a mandatory bid threshold at a large-cap listed supplier is rare, and Kenneth Dart now sits at or near the trigger point in two of the sector’s biggest quoted groups at once. Candle Lake Limited disclosed on 24 July 2026 that it had passed 30% of the shares and votes in Evolution AB, starting a four-week clock under Swedish takeover law.
Candle Lake crosses 30% in Evolution
Candle Lake, owned and controlled by Cayman Islands-based billionaire Kenneth Dart, acquired 2,050,000 shares in Evolution AB, lifting its combined holding with affiliates to 59,798,619 shares, or approximately 30.02% of Evolution’s total shares and votes.
Under the Swedish Act on Public Takeovers on the Stock Market (2006:451), Candle Lake must now either launch a mandatory offer for the remaining shares within four weeks of the acquisition, a deadline falling around 21 August 2026, or cut its holding below three-tenths of the voting rights.
The disclosure states explicitly that it is not an offer to acquire shares.
Any offer would have to be priced no lower than the highest price Candle Lake paid for Evolution shares in the six months before the offer is announced, a floor that also captures purchases made during the offer itself, under the takeover rules for Nasdaq Stockholm.
Candle Lake has a third route beyond bidding or selling down: the Swedish Securities Council can grant exceptions from the mandatory offer obligation, though the recognised grounds relate to rights issues and share-based acquisitions rather than open-market purchases.
Flutter interest structured to avoid an Irish bid
Dart has been building a position in Flutter since disclosing an initial 5% stake last September. The Irish Times reported on 4 July that his total interest had reached almost 29.6%, just short of the 29.9% level that would ordinarily force a bid for the entire company under Irish takeover rules.
The structure matters more than the headline number. Some 10.7 percentage points of that interest is held through cash-settled equity swaps, which carry no voting rights and are not normally counted towards the Irish threshold, so a mandatory bid is not expected even if the total interest passes 29.9%.
Flutter’s shares closed at $101.25 on 24 July, down 4.98% over the week on prediction-market concerns, and the stock is due to delist from the London Stock Exchange from 3 August.
Regulatory and financial backdrop
The bid clock started the day after the UK Gambling Commission published its statement on Evolution Malta Holding Limited, which agreed a £4.75 million settlement concluding a licence review opened in December 2024. The regulator found that Evolution’s money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment was not effective enough to flag that two operators it dealt with were supplying its games into Great Britain without a licence, across six unlicensed websites between December 2023 and November 2024. The Commission said the failings were serious enough for it to consider suspension before settling in light of Evolution’s cooperation and remedial action.
On trading, Evolution reported second-quarter net revenues of €517.8 million, down 1.2% year on year, with EBITDA of €341.0 million at a 65.9% margin and Europe returning to quarter-on-quarter growth of 3.5% after several weaker periods. Full-year 2025 net revenue was flat at €2.07 billion, with profit for the period down 14.6% to €1,062.1 million. Evolution shares closed at SEK 695.00 on 24 July and rose more than 4% when trading resumed on 27 July.
Bid or step back
At Evolution’s 24 July close of SEK 695.00, Candle Lake’s 59,798,619 shares are worth roughly SEK 41.6 billion. Whether Dart commits the capital to bid for the remaining shares, or steps back below the threshold, will be clear within four weeks.
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