EUROPORT, GIBRALTAR - 888.com is mourning the passing of its co-founder, Aharon Shaked, who died at the age of 58 after battling an undisclosed illness.
A dentist by trade, Aharon started 888.com with his brother, Avi, and two others -- brothers Shay and Ron Ben-Yitzhak -- in 1997 as Virtual Holdings Limited with Casino-on-Net as its main online product. The company was then based in Antigua.
According to Israeli news site, The Marker, the idea for building what would be one of cyberdom's biggest online gaming companies came to Aharon after attending a conference in Monte Carlo in the 1990s and observing that his fellow delegates flocking to the local casinos after the day's sessions.
He teamed up with brother Avi and mortgaged their homes for $100,000 to establish an online casino even if they knew very little about the gaming business.
888.com floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2005 and the Shaked brothers who had at that time about 70% stake in the company sold shares for approximately $91.3 million each. They however retained a combined stake of 50% through family trusts. The Ben-Yitzhak brothers currently holds 11% stake.
Despite the influx of fortune, it was reported that Aharon remained low-key and gave much of his fortune to charities especially to those organizations handling underprivileged children in his native Israel.
In an interview conducted by The Financial Times sometime in 2005, Aharon Shaked was asked why he remained low-profiled despite his riches:
"I have a lot of money. (But) I don't go to eat at the better restaurants or go to buy a new car because I've already done all those things."
Posted on 11 Jan 2010. Sourced from iGamingBusiness and CasinoGamblingWeb.
