Crystal Palace Group in Plans to Float – October 5th, 2005
Warren Cloud who controls the Online Casino Group – Crystal Palace Gaming – is preparing to float on the London Stock Exchange AIM. The Isle of Man-based group is believed to have appointed Seymour Pierce to advise on the listing, which is expected to put a value of £140m on the firm.
Crystal Palace claims to be the third-largest online casino on the basis of the number of visits to its sites, which include Crystalpalacecasino.com. However, Crystal Palace Casino and other online casinos which make up the Crystal Palace Gaming Group are synonymous with numerous customer complaints.
Indeed Crystal Palace Casino joined the Rogue Casinos Section of OCR back in April, due to their rude customer service and support.
It will indeed be interesting to see if Cloud’s operation tightens up it’s act once they have floated and the one positive to come out of the proposed IPO will mean the Crystal Palace Group will be answerable to their shareholders. Recently Warren Cloud and his Online Casino Operation were featured on Gamblog who commented:
“WARREN CLOUD – RTG casino operator whose casinos should be approached with caution. Warren Cloud, the biggest and apparently most successful of the Real Time Gaming casino operators, has a chequered history in the online gambling business and his ten casinos are the source of frequent player complaints in the various online gambling fora.”
Crystal Palace Gaming, of which Cloud will retain a 45% share once floated, will utilise the £47m raised to develop an online poker business. This is definitely one to watch and it remains to be seen if Crystal Palace will also invest in improving their up to now, poor customer relations.
Unlike the recent floatation’s of PartyGaming, 32Red Plc and Cassava who run successful operations well respected and liked amongst Online Gamers, the proposed floatation of Crystal Palace has appeared like a bolt out of the blue. On many popular Casino Forums, the news of the proposed Palace Float has surprised everyone.
OCR will definitely keep all our visitors updated on this one……
