5050 Poker shares to be delisted
Operator had seen licences suspended amid allegations of financial irregularities including misuse of player funds.
Troubled egaming operator 5050 Poker Holding has seen its application for delisting from Nasdaq OMX First North approved by the Nordic stock exchange.
It will cease trading on 20 July, after sale negotiations “ opened last month following the discontinuation of the company’s online gambling operations “ collapsed earlier this week.
The company explained in a statement yesterday: “In order to improve the players’ situation there are discussions with other potential stakeholders with an interest in 5050 Poker Ltd,” adding “The company hopes that these discussions will result in an improvement of the players’ ability to recover a greater amount of their claims on 5050 Poker Ltd.”
An ongoing investigation into the activities of the company found that available balances represented at most 15% of player funds, after the company’s subsidiary 5050poker was alleged to have misused player funds to make payments to Microgaming, upon whose network the poker room sat.
At the time the board of 5050 Poker Holding claimed Microgaming had been “Fining 5050 Poker Ltd in excess of 150.000″, however the software provider hit back at these claims arguing the payments were not fines but rather part of the network’s “rake conciliation” system, designed to correct “The imbalance that occurs in a poker network ecosystem when rake is the only valuation metric.”
Last month 5050poker saw its contract with Microgaming terminated following a “material breach ” of agreed terms, while regulators in Malta and Curaçao suspended its operating licences for poker and casino respectively.