Yesterday marked the first day of trading, and a good one at that, for online poker company PartyGaming. Although starting out at $2.12, stock prices rose 11 percent to $2.35 by the end of the first day. Additionally, PartyGaming announced that in light of it's promising first day on the London Stock Exchange, it would opt for overallotment for 115.3 million shares.

Of the four billion shares that comprise the poker company, 20.6 percent will be sold to British and European institutional investors, 5.6 percent will go to staff members and the remainder will stay with PartyGaming founders Anurag Dikshit, Ruth Parasol, Russ DeLeon and Vikrant Bhargava. Starting Thursday, general trading will begin, with shares being opened to general investors worldwide.

PartyGaming launched the London Stock Exchange's biggest float since July 2000, when Dimension Data debuted at almost $11 billion. PartyGaming came shy of that figure, but nonetheless floated at a respectable initial value of $8.4 billion.

Source: Poker777 Staff

Tuesday, 28 June 2005