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List Of Speakers
Our illustrious speakers...
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Craig Billings has a lengthy background in the gaming industry. After graduating cum laude from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Craig worked for Deloitte as a financial statement auditor to the industry, where he audited the activities of Boyd Gaming, IGT and Société des Bains de Mer, among others.
Craig left Deloitte in 2001 to attend Columbia Business School. In 2004, Craig began covering the sector within the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs, where he advised Las Vegas Sands on numerous financings, including the company's highly successful initial public offering in 2004, Penn National Gaming in its acquisition of Argosy Gaming and Aztar Corp in its sale to Columbia Sussex. Since mid 2007, Craig has covered the sector in EMEA from London.
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Nigel is the associate partner leading the Corporate Finance leisure and gaming team in the UK. Deloitte were the leading advisor to the mid-market in the leisure sector completing 15 deals in 2007 (source : Mergermarket). Nigel sits on the Gaming executive at Deloitte which co-ordinates audit, tax, corporate finance and consulting services to the sector. He is responsible for advisory services to the leisure and gaming industry on a global basis.
Deloitte have advised on many gaming transactions including the acquisitions of Riva Gaming and Thomas Estates by Hermes Private Equity, the disposal of Easybets and the acquisition of Talarius by Tattersall's / Macquarie. |
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Mark was the founder and Director of Sportingbet Plc, an online global sportsbook and casino. He now works as a successful Venture Capital Investor.
Born and educated in Hereford (UK), Mark completed a Business degree specialising in international marketing at Wolverhampton Polytechnic and worked in industrial goods, local radio and food marketing, prior to venturing into the Bookmaking Industry.
Mark was the owner of a traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ bookmaker’s chain for over 15 years, then recognised the potential of the Internet in the mid 90’s. Mark pursued this opportunity to its fullest. In October 1998, he launched Sportingbet.com from Alderney, which was instantly successful and was listed on OFEX in April 1999. In January 2001, the company floated on the Alternative Investment Market, part of the London Stock Exchange, raising £18m. Sportingbet operate online sports and horse race betting as well as casino and virtual games.
Mark’s entrepreneurial spirit has led his company to go from strength to strength, acquiring some of the biggest names in gaming - Betmaker.com (Costa Rica), Number One Betting Shop (Australia), Sportsbook (USA) and Sporting Odds (UK) to name a few - making Sportingbet the world’s largest internet gambling group. Sportingbet has revenues exceeding £1 billion and in excess of 1.1m customers from over 150 countries worldwide.
Sportingbet grew to report profits of £103m in year end July 2005. Employment peaked at around 1,000 people and market capitalisation of the company reached nearly £2billion. The company won various awards including: Mark Blandford AIM Entrepreneur of the year 2002 and Sportingbet AIM Transaction of the year 2005.
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Melissa Blau has worked with digital entertainment and technology companies for 12 years. She is currently an Operating Executive with Global Leisure Partners (GLP), providing advisory and investment services to leading private equity funds and gaming operators seeking investments and acquisitions in online gaming. Prior to joining GLP, Ms. Blau was the CFO of St. Minver, a Gibraltar-based white label operator of online casino, poker and bingo. Previously, Ms. Blau consulted for numerous start-up companies in the media, real estate & telecom industries, acting as an external CFO providing financial, strategic and business advice. Prior to that, she was a General Partner and founding member of Constellation Ventures, a Bear Stearns venture capital fund with over $450 million under management dedicated to the media and technology sector. Prior to that, she was a Director of Strategic Planning & Business Development at Viacom Interactive/Simon Schuster Online. Ms. Blau started her career in Investment Banking at Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. where she worked in the Leisure & Gaming Group, advising numerous companies on public financings and mergers & acquisitions.
Ms. Blau holds a B.S. from the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard University, where she wrote her thesis on “Online Gaming” (1995). |
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Philip is Business Development Director for The Royal Bank of Scotland's Corporate Banking, Leisure Team. With twenty-five year’s experience of customer facing management roles with the RBS Group, he has a keen eye for niche opportunities, taking many businesses from start up to major corporate status and working on a variety of bespoke debt and liquidity solutions linked to M&A activity and IPO transactions while looking for new opportunities across the Leisure sector.
For the last six years, Philip has been responsible for running the Bank's portfolio of Betting and Gaming clients which includes some of the world's leading operators and internationally known brands. He has been instrumental in driving forward the Bank's growth in the rapidly expanding and dynamic Betting and Gaming sector. He believes the winning combination of experienced bankers with market specialist knowledge, and a network of recognised industry advisors, will add significant value to the RBS proposition for both new and existing clients.
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Duncan's 10-year career in sales, marketing and business development includes FTSE 100 & Fortune 500 industry-leaders, Vodafone, The Thomson Corporation and Co-Founder of a mobile SMS marketing and Entertainment Company.
Duncan led the corporate sales and marketing efforts from product to commercial launch for an EMEA Division of The Thomson Corporation. Prior to this, Duncan was a Sales Director within both the Caudwell Group of Companies and headed a sales channel for Vodafone managing their multi-million pound Pre-Pay Airtime products.
As a Director within the Caudwell Group he led sales management for the multi-million pound accessories business unit. Before entering telecoms, Duncan was a Senior National
Account Manager for Bass Brewers where he successfully negotiated a £28,000,000 supply contract with an FT100 supermarket multiple retailer.
Duncan earned his Postgraduate Business qualifications from Nottingham Trent University and was formerly a Captain in the British Army.
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How do you turn an already successful generic sports betting utility site into a massively competitive brand? And for with multiple brands? Those were the questions faced by Alex when he joined Sportingbet PLC America's region is 2004; his and his team's answers over the past couple of years have resulted in their twice winning eGaming Magazine's "Best Non-European Sports Book," seeing active players increase by over 400% and the launch of the fastest growing poker network in the US. Now owned by a private company, Sportsbook.com and PlayersOnly.com have significantly raised the bar in the US for sports betting and poker sites and their marketing. Focusing on maximizing the user experience, beginning with the initial brand contact, the newly revised sites have seen visit to conversion rates improve by over 600% by maintaining the interest of “inner directed” players while appealing to a new pool of “outer directed” newbies. |
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Richard is Chief Executive of the Sporting Index Group, the world’s largest sports and event spread betting company with an estimated UK market share of over 75%. Sporting Index offers spread bets on a wide range of international sports and on media, television and world events. The company transacts predominantly through its websites and also offers customers the ability to bet on mobile phones and via telephone. Uniquely, over 50% of all bets are taken ‘in play’, i.e. during the event.
Sporting Index has also developed a wide range of on-line, proprietary gaming products, utilising its compelling higher/lower mechanism.
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Ian is the founding shareholder of growing betting shop chain Better which now operates 35 shops in London and the South East. He was formerly the Managing Director of At The Races (2002-2004) and a board member for Arena Leisure Plc (2001-2005).
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Anton Kaszubowski has been working as a senior executive in the iGaming sector since 2002. Anton was Managing Director of AIM listed FUN Technologies plc until it was sold to Liberty Media Corp in 2006 and is currently Chief Executive of the multi-platform TV and online gaming business, Pitchgaming.com. Prior to 2002, Anton specialised in providing mergers & acquisitions and financing advice to media, technology and leisure companies for Longacre Partners, Fleet BancBoston and JP Morgan Chase. Anton is also a Director of Scandinavian operator BetonBet and UK based 3D social networking platform developer, Dubit Limited. |
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Wayne has expertise in all areas of the brokerage business. He spent 15 years with international company MW Marshall & Co, where he held a number of positions including Group Treasurer. In this role, he was active in the development and negotiation of the group’s £180 million management buyout from British & Commonwealth. As Chief Executive and Managing Director of MAI plc (now United Business Media) for Asia Pacific and Middle East regions Wayne managed circa 1,000 staff in nine countries and negotiated the buyout of its Hong Kong operation, the purchase of a New Zealand operation, the management buyout of an Australian competitor, a MBO of a Middle East competitor and established joint ventures in Indonesia and India.
Wayne founded Affinity Internet Holdings (“Affinity”) in 1995 with the aim of establishing a company that specialised in the provision of branded fixed mobile and Internet services through major brands. Wayne left Affinity in 2002. |
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Simon is the Commercial Director of Million-2-1 Ltd. Million-2-1 is a leading provider of interactive soft-gaming products and is best known for inventing the reverse auction concept in 2003. The company has a full suite of gaming permits including a bookmakers license, pools permit, casino managers permit, bingo license and a software developers permit. In partnership with IGT owned Barcrest Group, Million-2-1 has also recently taken on the management of a new gaming portal, Kerching.com. Kerching already has a full online casino with over 60 games as well as a suite of Barcrest branded java games for play by mobile phone.
Distribution for Million-2-1’s product range has been built on the development of a number of major partnerships with companies such as UTV, Global Radio, Virgin Radio, Emap, Orange and O2. With a background in Sales and Marketing, Simon’s role is to develop and manage the relationships that drive product distribution. Simon was previously Client Services Director of Eunite, a Manchester based web development agency that was sold to N Brown plc in 2002. Before that, Simon had a number of roles in agency and client side sales and marketing. |
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Marcel is the CEO for Cellectivity, a leading UK mobile e-commerce provider specialising in mobile betting and gambling applications. Cellectivity’s prime product Bet2Go is the leading mobile odds comparison and sportsbetting application in the UK. In addition, the company develops applications on behalf of large online casino operators and manages the mobile gaming and gambling portals on behalf of three of the 5 UK mobile operators. He has a passion for providing a great user experience and believes that mobile will be the next frontier to conquer for the online gambling operators.
Marcel worked extensively with early stage and fast-growing enterprises, particularly in the area of technology and media. Marcel previously held Board level roles at Vizuri, a fast-growing UK IT risk management services provider, at the BBC in a now no longer existing IP commercialisation subsidiary and at GorillaPark, one of the early leaders in the European incubator market, and which invested in early stage technology and media companies across Europe.
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Sean joined Balderton Capital three years ago, and his interests include consumer Internet, digital media, and open-source software companies. He is on the boards of Moveme.com, Wonga.com, BetNow, and TouchLocal. Prior to Balderton, Sean spent four years with Commonwealth Capital Ventures, an early-stage technology venture capital firm based in Boston. Sean's experience also includes time at BEA Systems, a leading application infrastructure software company, where he focused on strategic sales into large, multinational corporations. Before that, Sean worked as a consultant in London for Bain & Company.
Education: MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, 2005, where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar; and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Rice University, 1997. |
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Neil joined Edison in 2005 as Director of Research. He is a qualified accountant (PwC) and has nine years experience as an equities analyst at Goldman Sachs. As Goldman's building and materials analyst in London, he was ranked second by both Institutional Investor and Reuters. He departed Goldman Sachs to help set up the specialist trading hedge fund, Tusker Capital. As well as being Director of Research, Neil still covers a number of stocks.
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Hilary has extensive experience in the betting and gaming sector, including international betting and gaming, licensing and compliance as well as new betting and gaming products, particularly on-line. Until 2000, she was head of legal for Ladbrokes’ gambling division.
Hilary's experience in this sector also extends to floats, mergers & acquisitions and joint ventures, whilst she and her specialist team at Berwin Leighton Paisner deal with all the day to day issues of licensing, marketing and support services in relation to all forms of gambling across multiple jurisdictions. Hilary is reported in Chambers and Partners 2006 as being “the doyenne of internet gaming” and having “superb networking skills”.
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Marcus is the CEO of Mfuse, founding the company in 2001 with Charles Palmer. Focusing on mobile gaming and gambling since the inception of Mfuse, Marcus has guided the company to its current dominant position in this space. Having successfully launched the worlds first Java sports book nearly two years ago, the company has grown from strength to strength, contacting with and delivery mobile gambling products for the majority of the UK’s major gaming operators. Prior to Mfuse, Marcus worked as a business and technology analyst for major blue chip companies. Predominantly working in the oil industry, he gained valuable experience of transactional technology solutions. |
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