THE Israeli family behind the world’s second-biggest online poker company looks set to become the next internet gambling billionaires after deciding to sell the PokerStars business.

The Scheinbergs, who recently moved the company’s operations to the Isle of Man, are understood to have appointed NM Rothschild, the City merchant bank, to sell or float PokerStars at a price of more than $2 billion (£1.2 billion).

PokerStars is the second-biggest virtual poker operator after PartyGaming, the company behind the PartyPoker.com website, whose four owners pocketed about £1 billion last summer after floating it on the London Stock Exchange with a value of £4.64 billion.

The flotation was the biggest and most colourful stock market listing of the year, propelling PartyGaming into the FTSE 100 index of Britain’s largest companies and thrusting its founder, Ruth Parasol, a former internet porn millionaire, into the limelight.

The founder of PokerStars, Isai Scheinberg, has a more conventional background for an internet entrepreneur, having worked as a senior programmer for IBM, the US computer group. It is understood that Mr Scheinberg and his family own about 75 per cent of PokerStars. The employees own most of the other 25 per cent.

Like PartyGaming, PokerStars derives much of its business from America, despite the dubious legality of internet gambling there. Technically, owners and directors of websites that accept US players could be imprisoned if they enter the country, although in practice they have been allowed free access.

Although a flotation for PokerStars, probably in the second half of this year, is a possibility, City analysts believe the huge growth in internet gambling is likely to make PokerStars attractive to both virtual and physical rivals.

One potential merger partner is 888 Holdings, which in September followed in the footsteps of PartyGaming in floating on the London Stock Exchange with a value of almost £600 million. Like PokerStars, 888 is controlled by Israeli interests, the Shaked and Ben Yitzhak families.

Some City analysts believe that the sale of PokerStars may also attract interest from traditional gambling companies, such as Rank Group and William Hill, keen to boost their presence in the online sector.

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