Exclusive: Betclic Everest CEO departs
Ignacio Martos leaves French operator after just a year " CFO Isabelle Andres promoted to chief executive.
Betclic Everest group chief executive Ignacio Martos has left the business after just a year, eGaming Review can exclusively reveal.
eGR understands that Martos (pictured) stepped down from his role in December last year, informing staff in an internal email seen by this publication. He has been replaced by chief financial and corporate officer Isabelle Andres, who has been at the company since September 2009.
“During this year we had to navigate difficult waters and it has been a tough and demanding experience for all of us, but it has also been rewarding to see that the measures taken helped to put the company back on track recover operational profitability and create new opportunities for quite a few members of our team,” Martos said in the internal email.
“The fact that Betclic Everest Group is now on the right path is [to] your merit. I feel extremely privileged to work with such a fantastic pool of talent; you are the real power of this company and I would like to thank you for the trust and support you gave me in such a challenging period,” he added. He also thanked the company’s board, saying that the group “wouldn’t have reached targets” without its “continuous support.”
Andres, described by Martos as “the best possible director general”, joined Betclic Everest from Locatel, a business supplying multimedia solutions to the hospitality and healthcare sector, and previously held senior financial management positions at Téléimages International and Radio France.
Martos was appointed CEO in September 2011, joining the operator from travel comparison website Opodo after Betclic co-founder Nicolas Beraud stepped down. On taking charge of Betclic Everest he launched a large-scale restructure which saw the company’s operations divided into three European regions and former Betclic CMO Marc Guigo take charge of the French, Swiss and Belgian markets, while Ricardo Domingues “ who has since left the company “ took control of Southern Europe and Latin America, and Tomasz Mazur was handed responsibility for Northern and Eastern Europe.
Speaking to eGR in November 2011, Martos explained the restructuring process as a move to “get closer” to Betclic Everest’s customers: “Each marketplace behaves differently, and we have to get that local flavour into our company. It is critical that our team can understand the difference between a French and Italian player, and give them the differentiated products that they need. Having closer market presence on the executive committee will allow us to learn about these markets and understand them directly.”
As a result of the restructure a number of senior staff left the company. This included Betclic Expekt CEO Thomas Winter, Betclic co-founder Eric Monçada and CTO Pierrick Pétain with a number of other key employees also leaving either as a direct result of the restructure or to pursue other projects. These include chief of regulatory and corporate affairs James Scicluna, head of central online marketing Lloyd Purser and head of social media Joakim Nilsson.
Deputy CEO Richard Courtois, who held responsibility for IT, project management and innovation is also understood to have departed, leaving three months ago.
Since the initial flurry of departures Jochen Dickinger, co-founder and joint managing director of the group’s German-facing subsidiary Bet-at-home has also departed, while sportsbook director Andy Wright has been appointed trading director of Ladbrokes.
The group has shown signs of recovery following Martos’s changes and recording a loss of around 90m in 2011, described by Martos as a direct result of “an accelerated depreciation of assets.” In its figures for the six months ending 30 September 2012, Betclic Everest saw losses decline 34.7% year-on-year, down from 33.1m to 21.6m.
The company also saw strong returns from betting on the Euro 2012 football tournament, with Betclic France MD Guigo revealing the company secured a 40% market share alongside 37.2% of the Olympic betting market and 50% of Tour de France betting.
The operator has also migrated its Betclic and Everest poker offerings onto Playtech’s iPoker network alongside its Expekt brand, having previously moved the Betclic poker room onto Everest’s platform from GTech’s International Poker Network in September 2011.
This looks likely to be followed by moves into Spain and Germany, where Bet-at-home was one of the first companies to secure a Schleswig Holstein gambling licence. Speaking at a press conference in September last year, Martos explained that the group’s “future is in regulated markets.”
“The last few months have been all about finding the right balance between technical investments and operating in an efficient manner. We have managed to do that and will be strengthening our brands in all regulated markets,” he added.
The outgoing chief executive all but confirmed these plans in his parting email, revealing that the budget for 2013 has already been set, with Betclic Everest set to continue to invest heavily in technology, “in order to get an engine that gives our clients the best experience in the marketplace and allows us to enter efficiently the regulated markets as they come.”