Mitchell Garber The New Partypoker Boss
Published: Wednesday, March 22, 2006 Online-Casinos.com
MITCHELL GARBER NEW PARTYPOKER BOSS!
Party Gaming announces replacement for CEO Segal
The speculation over the past weeks (see previous Online-Casinos.com & InfoPowa reports) has been on the money: PartyGaming named Mitchell Garber as its new chief executive today (Wednesday), recruiting the legal expert in online gaming who also had helped build a major payment-processing business.
The world's biggest online gaming group said Garber, who most recently helped to float and manage payment-processing firm FireOne, would start his new role on April 19. Segal is due to vacate the hot seat on June 1.
His appointment comes three weeks after Gibraltar-based PartyGaming said Chief Executive Richard Segal was leaving.
Garber will receive a salary of $1 million (GBP 570 000) a year and a $6 million payment to cover relocation costs from Canada to Gibraltar and the purchase of share options in FireOne and its parent, Optimal Group.
He will receive 7 million share options in his first year and a further 20 million options across years two, three and four, linked to PartyGaming's performance.
If he is to qualify for the full 20 million options, PartyGaming will have to outperform the FTSE 100 index by 10 percent and other online gaming companies including rivals Sportingbet and 888 by 10 percent.
No new shares will be issued to cover the options, which will come from an existing fund set up at flotation.
A qualified attorney, Garber (41) developed the first gaming law practice in Canada while at Montreal-based law firm Lazarus, Charbonneau, Attorneys and also advised governments on legislative and regulatory frameworks for the industry.
He helped to build Optimal Payments, a subsidiary of the Optimal Group, into a $5 billion payment-processing business in less than two years, PartyGaming said in a statement.
FireOne, which provides payment processing services for the online gaming industry, said on March 7 that Garber had resigned to pursue other opportunities in the sector.
PartyGaming, founded in 1997, owns and operates PartyPoker, the world's largest online poker room, as well as EmpirePoker, MultiPoker, IntertopsPoker and PokerNOW. It has recently pioneered the "one stop gambling" concept of a major integrated site offering a diversity of gambling types such as casino and poker gaming all accessed from one player account.
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