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V. Rishi Kumar

Hyderabad , June 3

PROMOTERS of PartyGaming Plc, the operator of the Web site PartyPoker, sprung a surprise onthe company's employees by offering them stock options without any payment.

The company will be partly offloading the promoters' holding, which includes that of two Indians, while listing on the London Stock Exchange.

Interestingly, nearly 1,000 employees of the company subsidiary, Ivy Comptech based in Hyderabad, will be given employee stock options at no cost.

The Chief Executive Officer of PartyGaming, Mr Richard Segal, on a conference call from London, told Business Line, "This is a befitting reward to our Indian employees who have made a big difference for the company. The entire back-end support for the PartyPoker is handled out of its Hyderabad centre, covering customer services, transactional processing and tech support."

"We have moved to a new facility in Hyderabad and plan to establish a campus of our own. A listing will provide us with a solid foundation; we would explore opportunities for strategic acquisitions and market consolidation," Mr Segal said.

The Gibraltor-based company, with a marketing subsidiary in London and its BPO operations in Hyderabad, expects to offload about 23 per cent of the promoters' holding. About 5.6 per cent of the issued share capital will be allotted to its trust.

About 50 per cent of the shares on offer are owned by two Indians based in Gibraltor— Mr Anurag Dikshit, Group Operations Director and Mr Vikrant Bhargava, Group Marketing Director, and both are expected to make big money.

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PartyGaming to list on LSE, offers ESOPs to Indian staff

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