From Their Online Gamble Family May Receive A Net Of $2bn

The Israeli family that owns the world’s second-biggest online poker company may be about to become the next internet gambling billionaires.  This is after their decision to sell the PokerStars business.
The Scheinbergs, are understood to have selected the City merchant bank, NM Rothschild, to sell or float PokerStars at a value of more than $2 billion (£1.2 billion).  They who recently moved the company’s operations to the Isle of Man.
After PartyGaming, the company behind the PartyPoker.com website, PokerStars, is the second-biggest virtual poker operative.  After the company’s floating of its shared on the London Stock Exchange, its four owners earned about £1 billion last summer with a value of £4.64 billion.
The flotation was the largest and most prominent stock market listing of the year, driving PartyGaming into the FTSE 100 index of Britain’s biggest companies and forcing its founder, Ruth Parasol, a one-time internet porn millionaire, into the limelight.
Isai Scheinberg, the founder of PokerStars, has a more straightforward background for an internet entrepreneur.  He worked as a senior programmer for the US computer group, IBM. It is believed that Mr. Scheinberg together with his family, own about 75 per cent of PokerStars. Most of the other 25 per cent is owned by the employees.
PokerStars derives much of its business from America, like PartyGaming.  This is despite the uncertain legality of internet gambling there. Owners and directors of websites that acknowledge US players, technically could be imprisoned if they were to enter the country.  In practice however, they have been permitted free access.
A flotation probably in the second half of this year, for PokerStars, is a real possibility. The huge growth in internet gambling is likely, City analysts believe, to make PokerStars desirable to both virtual and physical rivals.
888 Holdings is one possible merger partner, which in September followed in the tracks of PartyGaming in floating with a value of almost £600 million, on the London Stock Exchange. 888, like PokerStars, is controlled by the Shaked and Ben Yitzhak families, also Israeli interests.
Traditional gambling companies, such as Rank Group and William Hill, some City analysts believe, may also attract interest like that from the sale of PokerStars, keen to boost their presence in the online sector.

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