Playtech's potential £459.6m (€627.2m/$702.2m) purchase of trading platform Plus500 is set to go right to the wire after it announced a further delay to the protracted acquisition.

The two companies agreed a deal earlier this year, with Plus500 shareholders voting in favour of the takeover in July.

However, Playtech was forced to reveal a delay to approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in September, saying at that time that a decision was to be made by the end of November.

Playtech has now said that it “expects” the FCA’s judgement to be made by December 31.

A Plus500 statement said that the terms of the merger agreement are such that “it may be terminated if the acquisition is not consummated by December 31, 2015”.

Playtech offered 400p per share at the start of June for FTSE AIM-listed Plus500, which had seen its share price drop from 770p in May to 369.44p after hitting regulatory problems in the UK.

Playtech has also been hit by regulatory delays in Ireland related to its purchase of AvaTrade.