The Daily Telegraph

Playtech offloads Plus500 stake after founders halve holdings

- By Ayesha Javed

GAMBLING software provider Playtech has sold its entire stake in Plus500, a day after a clutch of the online trading platform’s founders cashed out 8pc of shares in the business.

Playtech, founded by the Israeli billionair­e Teddy Sagi, sold 11.4m shares in Plus500, a company it once attempted to acquire, for £176m after an approach from Credit Suisse, according to a source close to the matter.

The stake represents 9.99pc of Plus500’s shares, just under the 10pc threshold that would require a holder to meet additional regulatory requiremen­ts. It comes after five of Plus500’s founders halved their combined stake in the company. They sold a total of 8pc of the shares for £145m, less than a month after warning that profits would be affected by regulatory changes.

Five of the businessme­n who set up the Israel-based firm a decade ago decided to sell the shares “in response to significan­t demand from a small number of institutio­nal investors”.

The company told investors that the founders had also chosen to sell 9.4m shares because of “their desire to diversify their investment­s whilst raising funds for personal reasons”.

The move means that the group’s founders, Alon Gonen, Gal Haber, Elad Benizhak, Omer Elazari and Shlomi Weizmann, now own around 8pc of the group.

Plus500 previously benefited from a surge in interest in cryptocurr­encies and controvers­ial contracts for difference (CFD), which enable traders to speculate on price movements in fastmoving financial markets.

However, new European rules aimed at protecting inexperien­ced customers from losing too much money on CFD trading came into effect last month.

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