|
UK
Casino Times
> Casino
News
13 May 2005
Party Gaming Deals Its Hand To
Play For Market
Party
Gaming, the Gibraltar-based owner of the world's biggest
online poker site, yesterday moved a step closer to a
£5 billion - £6 billion London flotation with the
appointment of two high-profile directors.
The company, which owns
Party
Poker, named
Michael Jackson, chairman of software group Sage as its new
chairman, and Brian Larcombe, the former 3i boss as deputy
chairman. Both positions are non-executive.
It added that both
revenues and underlying earnings had quadrupled last year as
the craze for online poker took off. Revenues reached $602m
(£320m), with earnings before interest, tax,
depreciation and amortisation hitting $391m.
PartyPoker.com is bigger
than all the other poker sites put together, accommodating
70,000 players at peak times, playing on 8,000 virtual
tables, with the minimum stake 25 US cents.
Richard Segal, chief
executive, said the business had completed its strategic
review and was now working with adviser Dresdner Kleinwort
Wasserstein to decide on its options.
Previous joint-adviser
Investec is no longer involved, but denied market talk that
this was because it had found something wrong with the
business. David Currie, head of corporate finance at
Investec, said its mandate simply came to an end: "We
certainly did not find any silver bullet that caused us to
walk away."
Mr Segal declined to say
whether a London float, which would send the company
straight into the FTSE 100, was the preferred option.
However, many in the City are already betting on a float.
Robin Chhabra, an analyst at Evolution Beeson Gregory said
the appointments indicated it was "game on for an IPO". He
believed the business, which has little debt, could be
valued at $10billion.
Any float would generate
huge windfalls for PartyGaming's four owners - two American
and two Indian entrepreneurs.
The business was founded
in 1997 by American lawyer Ruth Parasol, who made her first
fortune from pornographic telephone chat lines and websites.
She is married to co-owner Russ DeLeon.
The biggest individual
shareholder, however, is Anurag Dikshit, the computer whizz,
who devised the software for PartyPoker. The other
shareholder is Vikrant Bhargava, marketing director. Mr
Segal, 42, declined to say how much the four may sell in any
float.
Most of the players on
PartyPoker are Americans, with less than 5pc from the UK. Mr
Segal said: "The growth's coming because you've got
celebrities like Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck playing,
broadband internet and now poker on TV. We've also had a
couple of big wins in big tournaments for online
players."
He cited Mike Gracz, ''a
Polish guy living in America in his early 20s who walked
away with $1.5m''.
He denied that sitting up
all night playing online poker was a bit sad.
"People can play when they
want, they don't have to dress up and they don't have to go
to a land-based casino which can be intimidating," he said.
He added PartyPoker was for "the mass market, not
high-rollers."
Related pages:
None
Also see:
UK
Online Casinos
Reviews of the leading, approved UK online casinos. Includes
details of the free money welcome bonuses offered to new
players by the online casinos.
Online
Casinos Guide
New to online casinos? We take you through the process in a
friendly, easy-going way.
CasinoTimes.co.uk
is updated every day with the latest online casino and
gambling news.
Click
Here
to bookmark us and check us out daily!
Return
to UK Casino News index
|
