NEWS > ANALYSIS
GAMING CEOS:
RICHARD GLYNN
THEIR FIRST SIX MONTHS IN CHARGE
Glynn joined Ladbrokes from Sporting Index in April 2010, replacing Chris Bell, and that same month saw the operator announce a joint venture with French media company Canal+. However within six months, Lads had withdrawn from that deal, citing “prohibitive” taxes, as well as selling its loss-making Italian retail arm. Meanwhile MD of egaming John O’Reilly was the highestpro?le of a number of departures as the operator went through the ?rst of several management restructures during Glynn’s tenure. Share price on appointment: 158.9p Share price six months on: 135.1p Share price now: 229.3p
RALPH TOPPING
The William Hill chief was appointed to his role in February 2008, having joined 35 years earlier as a shopworker in one of the operator’s Scottish locations. The Italian joint venture with Codere was sold to Intralot not long after, while Topping’s revival of Hills’ online business came via negotiations with Playtech and OpenBet (then Orbis) as the operator looked to steal a march on some of its rivals. The Playtech deal, agreed in October and described by Topping at the time as “transformative”, culminated in the acquisition of the software provider’s 29% stake for £424m agreed on 1 March this year. Share price on appointment: 409p Share price six months on: 265p Share price now: 429.2p
JIM RYAN AND NORBERT TEUFELBERGER
“Ever since the ?rst wave [of redundancies] it has been a case of seeing a lot of CVs coming in, before these people got pushed,” explained the former employee. “The ?rst wave for me seemed to be mostly marketing people or countr y managers in auxiliary markets which hadn’t regulated and which didn’t ?t into Betfair’s future plans, but after that, people started getting nervous.” Ruthless is best While by no means a new phenomenon, it has been suggested that the latest round of redundancies carried a more ruthless quality, something which a former senior employee suggests could be for the best. “Eventually the problem with Betfair became that no one really took responsibility for making
Bwin.party has since returned to the sole CEO model following Ryan’s January retirement, however the pair were very much equal partners when the company began trading as a combined entity in March 2011. Within a week of the merger being completed, Teufelberger was forced to speak out about German egaming proposals which decimated the operator’s share price, later making his voice heard about noncompliant operators in France, while Ryan focused on US-facing deals with MGM and Boyd Gaming which came to fruition in October of that year. Few highpro?le departures, though central marketing director Matt Robinson left for Betfair while Stefan Kovach and Michael Maerz also moved on. Share price on appointment: 194p Share price six months on: 122p Share price now: 148p
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