PartyGaming Billionaire Wants More

2006 August 21, Jonny Vincent

Vikrant Bhargava was one of the co-founders of the widely successful PartyGaming empire but resigned from the board of directors and sold a mountain of shares only months ago.

Bhargava founded PartyGaming with Anurag Dikshit and Ruth Parasol in 2000 but recently decided the time was right to pursue other interests, cashing in a large percentage of his shares, which started the recent decline in share price of the blue-chip stock. PartyGaming has dropped from a high of 160p before Bhargava placed more shares on the market and has been battling ever since, with the entire online gaming industry suffering due to uncertainty over the US market.

Bhargava's exit strategy appears to have been well-timed. The thirty-something marketing genius has now chosen another high rolling industry for his next venture – he will launch a new financial services firm next month in Gibraltar.

Bhargava has had a number of career changes, beginning his career studying electrical engineering in India before getting a job as a credit officer at the Bank of America, followed by a job with British Gas as an analyst in the business-development division. Parasol approached him with her plans to launch an online poker room in 1999, and Party Poker was launched the following year. Their first product rapidly became the premier online poker room in the world, and Party Casino was launched not long after.

The founders then decided to float their online gaming empire on the London Stock Exchange with a FTSE flotation worth almost $10 billion. Dikshit sold 57 million shares in June, reducing his stake to 29%, while Bhargava sold 67 million shares, reducing his stake to only 7%. Parasol and her husband, Russel DeLeon, have just under 30% together, after selling 33 million of their shares in June.

Bhargava's new project is a start-up company called Sirius, of which it is believed he will be a director. Bhargava's new fund of funds will be aimed at investors will an appetite for higher risk and volatility, and it would be hard to bet against this man, who seems to turn everything he touches into gold.

If Bhargava's latest roll of the dice doesn't work out, he needn't worry – he still has 7% of the largest online gaming company in the world and a probable great deal more, if speculation regarding the size of his personal fortune are correct.

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