Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Sportingbet founder Blandford scoops £2.5m in share sales

Stephen Foley
Wednesday 13 August 2003 00:00 BST
Comments

The founder and deputy chairman of Sportingbet has sold £2.5m of shares, the controversial online betting group said yesterday.

Mark Blandford, the Hereford bookie who set up Sportingbet six years ago, disposed of 8 million shares at 31p, reducing his holding by almost a third to 8 per cent.

The sale came as Sportingbet issued issued 28.6 million new shares to the founders of SportsBook, the US online betting group it acquired in 2001. The company had to renegotiate the terms of the acquisition after SportsBook achieved performance targets which triggered early payment of shares and cash bonuses to the founders which would have crippled Sportingbet.

It is the first share sale by Mr Blandford since he floated Sportingbet on the junior AIM market in January 2001. At the time, the share offering had to be scaled back and he and other investors held off from plans to sell stock.

He had set up the company after seeing a presentation on the potential of the internet in 1996, selling his chain of five bookmakers to fund the venture.

The 31p a share disposal price achieved by Mr Blandford yesterday compared with 120p at the time of the flotation and with Sportingbet's AIM high of 167.5p. The stock was off 2.5p to 29p on news of the sale.

Meanwhile, Rob Terry, the founder of another dot.com era darling, the Innovation Group, also sold shares yesterday. Mr Terry announced last month that he would be leaving the group, which sells management consultancy software to insurance firms, at the end of its financial year in September. He is currently a non-executive vice chairman, having been forced to give up the role of chairman and chief executive as the price of a rescue rights issue in February.

He netted £3.2m yesterday from selling 26 million Innovation shares, two-fifths of his holding and leaving him with a 9.7 per cent stake worth £5.3m. Innovation was floated in 2000 but its shares have fallen from a high of 900p late that year to 13.25p yesterday.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in