Financial News’ Lucy Burton reports on the success of Shore Capital’s hire of Mark Percy.

Shore Capital’s hire roughly a year ago of a Cantor Fitzgerald banker who handled the Aim flotation of Stride Gaming has come up trumps, helping the firm to win, first, a broking slot with the UK bingo group, and then a role on a share issue to part-finance a £70 million transformative double acquisition.

Stride Gaming, which floated on London’s junior market in May 2015, completed its takeover of online bingo business 8Ball, and some assets of online bingo firm Tarco as well as Netboost Media, which services those assets, on August 31, the company said in a statement. The deal had been announced in July.

The takeover means that Canaccord Genuity and Shore Capital, named as Stride’s joint corporate brokers in April, have already started to reap the rewards of their nascent relationship. Canaccord is the financial adviser on the deal, and joint bookrunner and joint broker with Shore Capital, according to filings related to the deal.

Shore Capital’s relationship with Stride Gaming is partly down to the hire of Mark Percy in June 2015 from Cantor.

Stride Gaming’s flotation on Aim was one of the last deals Percy worked on while at Cantor before switching to Shore Capital, and he is among the Shore Capital bankers named in Stride’s announcement of its broker switch and on its latest deal.

At Canaccord, corporate broking head Bruce Garrow is among the advisers. Canaccord was also the broker to gambling firm Sportingbet before it was sold in 2013.

The management team at Stride has been involved in the online bingo market since 2002, selling the online bingo business of Globalcom to 888 Holdings in 2007 and Wink Bingo to 888 Holdings for £60 million in 2010. In 2014 they acquired the online bingo brands Jackpot Café, Jackpot Liner and King Jackpot from Table Top Entertainment.

Eitan Boyd, chief executive of Stride Gaming, said in the statement that since the firm floated, it had taken “advantage of the consolidation in the gambling sector by expanding organically and through undertaking selective strategic acquisitions”.

31 August, Lucy Burton, www.efinancialnews.com