All change23 Oct 2016 10:00
William Hill boss pays price for ‘blunders’
Chairman to go after riling investors with botched Canadian merger
Peter Evans
October 23 2016, 12:01am, The Sunday Times
Odds-on he’s off: Gareth Davis has been struggling to keep up with William Hill’s bigger rivals
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William Hill will begin searching for a new chairman next year after a series of “blunders” by Gareth Davis — who is under attack from some of the FTSE 250 bookmaker’s biggest shareholders.
Davis has come under fire for attempting a £6bn merger with Canada’s Amaya, the owner of the PokerStars website, which collapsed last week.
Shareholders have also raised concerns that he chairs two other listed companies and is unable to devote enough time to the troubled bookie. “His lack of judgment has clearly impaired his chairmanship,” said one big shareholder.
The gambling giant has been without a permanent chief executive since July, when Davis ousted James Henderson — whom he had hired just two years before.
Once Davis has found a replacement for Henderson, the board will start looking for a new chairman, sources said. It is understood the process will start early next year.
Davis came under pressure from shareholders after a series of crippling profit warnings during Henderson’s tenure. Several senior executives have also quit.
Davis, 66, became chairman of what was then Britain’s biggest bookmaker in 2010 after nearly four decades at the tobacco giant Imperial Brands, including 14 years as chief executive. His departure will come as investors turn the screw on corporate governance.
The recent ructions at William Hill suggest that Davis is struggling to keep on top of his broad portfolio of directorships, investors said. In addition to leading the bookmaker’s board, he is also the £360,000-a-year chairman of the FTSE 100 building materials firm Wolseley and receives £263,000 from the FTSE 250 cardboard maker DS Smith as chairman. He was paid £319,221 last year by William Hill.
“Three is one too many,” said another of William Hill’s largest shareholders.
Samuel Johar, chairman of headhunter Buchanan Harvey & Co, said Davies had suffered “two major slip-ups” at William Hill. “He had to fire a chief executive he had hired, and then blundered into discussions on a deal few people thought made sense. A chairman can survive one mishap, but not two,” said Johar.
William Hill argued that Davis had “an exceptional track record” and that his experience and insights “are hugely valuable”. The search for a chief executive was “progressing well”, it said.
Gambling companies have been squeezed from all sides in recent years. Rising taxes on in-store betting machines and a mooted crackdown on daytime television advertising has forced companies to do deals to safegu
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