Playtech Executive Chair Brian Mattingley Set to Step Aside

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.

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.

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.

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%.