The latest online casino news and William Hill

There has been a considerable amount of online casino news for us to report here at onlinecasino.ie over recent months, mainly concerning mergers and takeovers within the sector. Four of the biggest online casino and online sports batting companies have all agreed consolidation deals in the last few months, with Ladbrokes merging with Coral and the latest being a merger combining the assets of Betfair and Paddy Power. All of this consolidation is forecast to help these companies cope with the new punitive gambling tax regime and have been welcomed by the majority of their investors. Now however it appears that analysts and investors are beginning to ask questions as to where this leaves William Hill. It is approximately fifteen months since James Henderson took over as chief executive from the long- serving Ralph Topping and not much has happened in that time to cheer William Hill’s shareholders. Whilst their main rivals have all successfully completed promising mergers, William Hill’s attempt to acquire 888 Holdings failed. It has to be said that Mr. Henderson remains upbeat about the situation and last week insisted that William Hill was ‘already a big-scale player’ in the online casino and betting shop sector and did not need an acquisition to compete with their growing rivals. He did however say that they would look at any suitable opportunity that came along. In the meantime some investors are also apparently starting to worry about the number of senior executives who have left the company over recent months to join rivals, with the latest departures being James Curwen, director of gaming innovation and Matt Warner, sportsbook director. Again a William Hill spokesman denied that there was a significant loss of talent and claimed that their appointed replacements were equally high quality and there was also a strong pipeline of in-house talent available.