PartyGaming Float a Winner
28 Jun 2005
"Strong demand for shares in the world's biggest online poker company meant the four founders sold extra into the flotation.
"The quartet of two Indian computer engineers plus an American former porn entrepreneur and her husband will now collect a combined £1bn in cash and retain stakes collectively worth £3.5bn.
"PartyGaming peppered its float prospectus with warnings about the risk of criminal and civil proceedings in America, notably from the US Department of Justice, which regards gambling over the internet as illegal.
"However, about 200 institutions, 75% of them British, bought shares at the float price of 116p, concentrating instead on the extraordinary sums of cash being generated by internet poker operators..."