WPT unlikely to verify offer credibility before lapse

Tuesday, July 12, 2005 | 9:33 a.m.

WPT Enterprises Inc., the producer of the "World Poker Tour" television show, said it wasn't able to determine the credibility of an offer to buy the company by Doyle Brunson.

The company doesn't expect additional information from Brunson before the offer lapses tomorrow, West Hollywood, California-based WPT Enterprises said in a statement distributed by Business Wire.

Last week, WPT said it received an unsolicited $700 million bid, or about double the company's market capitalization at the time, from a group of investors led by Brunson, a professional poker player.

"We really have not been looking to sell this company at all," Chief Executive Steven Lipscomb said in an interview from Los Angeles earlier Monday. However, "we have a fiduciary duty to shareholders and to everyone involved to look at every offer that comes in."

Andrew Greenebaum, a WPT spokesman with an outside firm, didn't immediately return a telephone message to his office after business hours.

WPT shares, which fell 72 cents to $22.48 in extended trading, declined $3.30, or 12 percent, to $23.20 in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading Monday. The stock has almost tripled since shares were first traded in August 2004.