Amaya Shareholders Confidence in David Baazov Unshaken

David Baazov stated that Quebec securities regulator’s investigation didn’t damage shareholder confidence as Amaya’s shareholders voted to keep him as the CEO of the company on Monday at the company’s annual meeting.

Even though Baazov himself is a part of investigation by The Authorite des Marches Financiers (AMF), the topic of investigation was not mentioned once at the meeting. The most unpleasant moment for the company was probably when Amaya’s Canadian offices were raided back in December as a part of an investigation concerning events surrounding sharp increase in company’s stock price months before the acquisition.

Autorité des Marchés Financiers, the securities regulatory authority in the Province of Quebec, was granted approval to seize documents and records of communications from Amaya’s Chief Executive David Baazov and chief financial officer Daniel Sebag.

Baazov explained that investigation is something that should be taken seriously but added that it should not be dramatized. The AMF didn’t initiate any legal proceedings against company even though investigation is ongoing and David strongly believes that when investigation comes to an end, Amaya will be cleared.

There is still no evidence that Amaya’s directors and its employees have violated any Canadian securities laws.

Last year was brilliant and big for Baazov as Amaya completed a $4.9b acquisition of gambling giant PokerStars and became the biggest publicly listed online gambling company. The investigation certainly didn’t affect Amaya’s operation as the company’s shares began trading on the Nasdaq’s Global Select Market on June 8th.

Since Baazov kept his position as Amaya’s CEO, the company’s focus will probably remain on breaking on to the US market. Baazov recently revealed that PokerStars is expected to be licensed in New Jersey in the third quarter of 2015. However Baazov admitted that future of online gaming in United States is pretty much unknown and that he doesn’t want to make any predictions.

Amaya has plans to double the number of their online poker users in the next five years as it was reported but they also revealed that they want to move into other online services to attract more consumers. Baazov explained that they don’t want to push consumers only towards gaming but rather want to give them what they want.

Photo: sbcnews.com