From New York Times:
As a rule, companies don’t often draw attention to business practices that could land their executives in jail. But for PartyGaming PLC, potential illegalities aren’t just a secret hidden in its business plan – they are the centerpiece of its business plan.
A giant in the online gambling business, PartyGaming is an often-overlooked megasurvivor from the dot-com crash of the late 1990’s. As hundreds of profitless commercial sites disappeared into the digital ether, PartyGaming’s popular gambling sites – like PartyPoker.com – soared, with revenues and profits growing exponentially year after year.
This week, the company will go public in what is expected to be the largest offering in years on the London Stock Exchange, one that will make billionaires out of its ragtag assortment of founders and major stockholders – including a California lawyer who earned her first fortune in online pornography and phone-sex lines. All told, as much as $9 billion is expected to be raised, with all of the cash going to private shareholders selling portions of their stakes.
But there will be no Wall Street investment houses lapping up fees in the giant deal, no victory dances in the offices of American corporate lawyers. That is because PartyGaming, based in Gibraltar, has no assets in the United States, and its officers or directors could risk being served with a civil suit – or an arrest warrant – if they came to the United States on business.