bwin.party to fight Jason Ader on new board members

Jason Ader the fourth largest shareholder in online gambling giant bwin.party has a fight on his hands to get his nominated four directors on the board of the company following the announcement that bwin.party has urged shareholders to vote against the proposal at the forthcoming annual meeting on the 22^nd May.

Investment vehicle SpringOwl is owned by Ader which bought 5.25% of the firm from its previous founders Ruth Parasol and Russ Deleon wants to install the Directors to help stop the decline in the online gambling company with what he describes as bringing in significant expertise in online gaming, technology and U.S. banking systems.

However bwin.party management say the increase in board members would hinder decision making with the board becoming too large, a position Ader denies.

The move by Ader and SpringOwl is very similar to that with US slot machine manufacturer IGT, where his company had a stake and wanted one of his people on the board. In that instance Ader was successful.

SpringOwl is known as an “activist” investor, looking at companies that are struggling and feel that their involvement in strategy and management can help increase investor value.

It has only been a couple of year that bwin.party reduced the size of the board to 9 saying that the board was previously too big, too costly and did not help in decision making. With the Ader proposal that figure would again raise to 13 which was the number before the previous reduction.