City profiles
Gareth Davis “Three failed mergers, plunging online sales, and a near-unanimous shareholder revolt” – it hasn’t been a good year for William Hill, where there is still a vacancy for a CEO, says Cristina Criddle in The Daily Telegraph. But the bookie’s chairman, Gareth Davis, is philosophical about the latest failed attempt to merge with the Canadian online poker firm Amaya, which was scuppered this week by shareholders. “On this one, in racing parlance, we barely got to the starting gate, never mind the winning post,” he says. These are dangerous times for William Hill. The industry is in the midst of a rapid consolidation, and “with every failed deal, its prospects deplete”. Still, at least Davis is upbeat. “A sausage sandwich cures everything,” he pronounces cheerfully. Don’t bet on it. “It’s only four years since Snapchat was first sniffed at as a sexting app,” says Lex in the FT. “Its disappearing messages made it more likely that pictures you may regret taking would not go public.” But now the firm, renamed Snap Inc, has 150 million users, and is heading for a “mega-unicorn” flotation likely to be the biggest tech IPO for years. Snap could be valued at as much as $25bn, says The Guardian. That will mean quite a payday for Evan Spiegel, 26, who founded the outfit with his Stanford fraternity pal Bobby Murphy in 2011; the founders’ stakes would be worth almost $4bn each. What a vindication for Spiegel’s risky decision to reject a $3bn takeover bid by Facebook in 2013, when Snapchat had yet to make any revenue.