Fanduel board of directors cut by half
News on 12 Aug 2017
News on 12 Aug 2017
Daily fantasy sports major FanDuel’s board of directors has been radically changed, losing half of its members as the restructuring of the company continues.
Our readers will recall that following the abandonment of a merger with rival DraftKings earlier this year a special resolution kicked in which required the company to hand a larger chunk of its equity to its financial backers, and this has formed the basis for the board changes.
The co-founder and wife of the CEO, Lesley Eccles, along with chief product officer Tom Griffiths, have resigned their seats, together with representatives of investors Pentech and NBC Sports Group.
Alan Resnikoff of Shamrock, which led a $70 million funding round for FanDuel in 2014, has also resigned , reducing the number of directors by half to five.
Staying on are Shamrock’s Michael LaSalle, Ted Oberwager of private equity group KKR, which led the company’s $275m funding round two years ago, and CEO and co-founder Nigel Eccles.
The remaining two seats are occupied by representatives of early investors Piton Capital and Comcast Ventures, which respectively led a $4m round in 2011 and $11m round in 2013.
The changes mean that FanDuel founders now account for 20 percent of the board, down from 30 percent, while Shamrock and KKR control 40 percent of the board between them, compared with 30 percent previously.
KKR and Shamrock are also the leaders of a group of investors that have seen their combined shareholding in the company increase from 54 percent to over 70 percent due to the merger-termination clause agreed at the start of this year taking effect this month.
