The online casino technology company PartyGaming is making another move on the London stock market this week. The company, valued at about $10 billion, will sell about 8.75% of its shares, according to broker Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. This will bring the free drift of the online casino technology company shares up to 35%. Analysts have expected a share sale from PartyGaming since May, when two of the company's founders proclaimed they would be stepping down from the board.
The story of how the online casino technology company was founded is somewhat of an Internet legend. In 1998, Ruth Parasol, a California "porn princess" commissioned a friend of a friend, Anurag Dikshit, then 25, a computer engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, to write a piece of software. She invested her profits from the "adult entertainment" business in online casino technology. The founders have fared well since. Dikshit is among the youngest billionaires in the world. Parasol, in her thirties, and her husband, Russ DeLeon, own billions in shares as well.
The online casino technology company's success demonstrates the power and popularity of the business. For instance, over 70,000 people regularly play simultaneously at PartyPoker, run by PartyGaming. The online casino profits by taking a rake of 1% or 2% from each hand of poker they host. Entering new territories in the future, such as China, is expected to help the new share holders of the online casino company join in on the profits. |
