Happy birthday, PartyGaming. Or possibly not. A year ago, the City was divided over whether this online poker and casino group’s stock would soar or plummet. Ahead of next weekend’s anniversary of the flotation, the opposing factions can both claim to have been correct.
Not even at the height of the dotcom boom did companies crash straight into the FTSE 100 as PartyGaming did. And dotcom flotations did not come with ‘Don’t buy me’ stamped across the prospectus. In this case, the offer document famously had 33 pages of risk warnings — but, ironically, the risk was not its gambling operation. PartyGaming acts as agent, not principal: customers play against each other while the company takes a rake from each hand without worrying who wins or who loses.
The risks that made much of the City think PartyGaming was a non-starter were such matters as co-founder Ruth Parasol having made her first fortune from internet porn.
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