History
The business was founded by Avi and Aaron Shaked and Shay and Ron Ben-Yitzhak in May 1997 as Virtual Holdings Limited. Casino-on-Net was launched at that time and an administrative centre was established in Antigua. In 2002 Reef Club Casino and Pacific Poker were launched. In 2003 its administrative center was moved to Gibraltar. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2005.
In late 2006 Ladbrokes and 888.com announced merger discussions. However in April 2007 the companies announced that due to recent changes of Tax laws in the UK and fears of legal actions by the US government, both parties had amicably agreed not to continue discussions.
In March 2007 888 announced its acquisition of Bingo business of Globalcom Limited for up to $43.4 million in cash.
After some downswings in terms of player volume from February 2010 to July 2010, one could finally see signs of recent investments paying off. 888.com overtook the 4th place on the poker network list in April 2012 after almost having tripled their peak number of players from July 2010 to February 2012.
Read more about this topic: 888 Holdings
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“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)