F E A T U R E TA L K I N G P O I N T S
a business plan that was deliverable.” However, the British broadsheet press elaborated this in the days following the rejection. It was claimed from some quarters that CVC’s proposals were out of sync with Corcoran’s own ambitions for the operator, outlined in a trading update days before negotiations came to a close. And shareholder Richard Koch – one of the driving forces behind the CVC bid – told The Daily Telegraph that no alternative management team had been readied. Betfair has put this all behind it now, the chief executive claims, and with the bene?t of hindsight he admits the whole affair had a “galvanising” effect on Betfair. “It reintroduced the company to some potential investors who hadn’t really looked at it in recent years. We came out and said what we were doing and where there was momentum, and we reiterated that there is still momentum across most of those dimensions and that we’re getting on with it,” he says. Things move quickly at Betfair, Corcoran says. “There is almost no focus on those events now in the business, and we’re getting on with new things.” This is yet to manifest itself in the ?rm’s ?nancial ?gures, however, with underlying pro?ts slipping 27% in the CEO’s “transitional” ?rst year and a hefty impairment charge meaning the operator actually posted a £49.4m loss over the period. Revenues remained ?at year-on-year at £387m, but positives come from the fact the growth is arriving by and large from sustainable jurisdictions. Most notably growth is coming from the UK where a change in marketing focus around the turn of the year has seen the customer base grow by 18% over a seven-month st