The chairman of Playtech, the London-listed gambling technology group, is to step down, triggering a search for a successor with a taste for stringent corporate governance challenges.
Sky News has learnt that Playtech will announce this week that Brian Mattingley, who has held the role since 2021, is to retire from its board this year.
Egon Zehnder International, the boardroom headhunter, is being appointed to handle the search for Mr Mattingley’s successor, according to a source close to the situation.
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A former chairman and chief executive of 888, the London-listed gaming company now known as Evoke, Mr Mattingley was also a founding director of Gala Leisure.
At Playtech, he has overseen a frenetic period of corporate activity while also finding himself in the eye of a series of storms with shareholders over boardroom pay and wider corporate governance.
The most recent of those came in December when close to a third of investors rebelled over a €100m bonus plan for Mor Weizer, the company’s chief executive, along with other senior executives.
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Shareholders give Mr Mattingley credit, however, for helping to navigate the company through a challenging period in the gambling industry, in particular his role last year in securing the sale of Snaitech, its Italian consumer gambling arm, for €2.3bn.
That represented a nearly threefold return on Playtech’s initial investment in the business, triggering total returns to shareholders of up to €1.8bn – a sum almost equivalent to all of the special dividends paid by London-listed companies in 2023.
The sale of Snaitech will transform Playtech into a pure-play business-to-business operation.
During Mr Mattingley’s three-and-a-half year tenure, shares in the company have risen by about 60%.
A Playtech spokesperson declined to comment on Tuesday.
