Putting the Party Gaming harvest to work

Party Gaming co-founder Vikrant Bhargava, who resigned from the board of directors and cashed in a truckload of shares is intent on growing an already substantial personal fortune, it appears.

The thirty-something marketing whizz who founded Party Gaming with Anurag Dikshit and Ruth Parasol in 2000 has chosen another high rolling industry for his next venture - the financial services business, specifically a new hedge fund of funds firm to be launched next month.

According to The Times, Bhargava is investing in the start-up of Sirius, a new Gibraltar-based investment vehicle in which it is believed he will also be a director. The move comes two months after Bhargava and other directors sold part of their stakes in Party Gaming worth GBP 232 million only a year after its flotation on the London Stock Exchange.

The new fund of funds is aimed at investors with an appetite for higher risk and volatility. It will be managed by David Linsley, a former director of Cross Asset Management, a hedge fund bought last year by RAB Capital, the quoted investment group. Linsley had previously worked in prime brokerage at Lehman Brothers.

Bhargava has had several career changes, from a credit officer at the Bank of America and a British Gas analyst in the business-development division, since studying electrical engineering in India.

Party Gaming, which owns the top online gambling site Partypoker.com and a growing number of other gaming-style subsidiaries such as Party Casino and Party Backgammon, joined the FTSE last year with a GBP 5.5 billion flotation. Dikshit offloaded 57million shares in June, reducing his stake to 28.95 percent, while Bhargava sold 67million, leaving him with 6.96 percent. Fellow founders Ruth Parasol and her husband, Russell DeLeon, have disposed of 33 million shares, leaving each with 14.87 percent of the company.

If things don't pan out in the hedge fund business, Bhargava has plenty in reserve - between them, the four founders still own 65.7 percent of a still growing and prospering Party Gaming.

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