Fears that PartyGaming’s debut on the London Stock Exchange would not go well, so far, seem to be unfounded. Last Monday, June 27 th, PartyGaming went public with shares priced at 116 pence ($2.12) a share, which is in the middle of the expected trading range, and shot up by 11% at the end of the day, closing at 129 pence per share (or $2.35). By the close of the day, PartyGaming was valued at more than nine billion dollars, making it more valuable than casino empires like Harrah’s Entertainment and Wynn Resorts and almost as valuable as MGM Mirage. If successful, the flotation will make PartyGaming’s founders and many of its executives, multimillionaires. Its founder, Ruth Parasol, and her husband, J. Russel DeLeon, were selling shares worth $370 million each, and the company’s group operations officer, Anurag Dikshit, was selling shares worth $720 million. The three will also retain large stakes in PartyGaming even after selling their stock.

Chief of PartyGaming, Richard Segal, believes the company will continue to grow. A good indicator of its continued growth is PartyGaming’s intentions to target Europe and Asia. In these regions, PartyGaming will focus on its bingo and casino operations. According to Segal, this end of their business has been largely ignored because of the boom in the online poker business.

Meanwhile, the public offering for PartyGaming was more than three times oversubscribed, a volume that indicates that American fund managers bought shares. Ed Bridges, a PartyGaming spokesman, said that “shares are being sold to a broad international group of investors”, but would not specify which countries or funds participated.

Inquiries as to whether the larger U.S. funds such as Fidelity, Putnam, and Vanguard, participated in the offering went unanswered, probably because of the fuzzy legal status of Internet gambling in the United States. In contrast, Britain has legalized and welcomed the online gambling industry and has even established a gambling commission to oversee the business, in an effort to lure operators from offshore locations to Britain. The legalization has resulted in an explosion of marketing among gambling sites in Britain and several other Internet gambling businesses are expected to follow PartyGaming’s example and go public later this year on the London Stock Exchange. Gala and 888.com are two such companies that have announced their intentions to go public.

While the big American financial institutions were absent from PartyGaming’s offering because of fear of possible repercussions from legal authorities in the U.S., the American fund managers with a British focus may find themselves in a conflicted position. Because of PartyGaming’s size, it is expected to be included in September in the FTSE 100 index, which tracks the largest listed companies in Britain. That could compel funds that invest in the index to buy stakes in a business that is not legal at home.