Scientific Games has made some big changes in its executive management in order to be able to position itself to take advantage of what it sees as new opportunities for growth in other markets, particularly China.
According to the company’s release, Michael R. Chambrello, the Company’s President and Chief Executive Officer, will become the Chief Executive Officer – Asia-Pacific Region. This newly created role will enable the Company to substantially enhance its focus on realizing its growth potential in China and other jurisdictions in the Asia-Pacific region. Then, at the request of the Board of Directors of Scientific Games, A. Lorne Weil, the Company’s Chairman, will also become Chief Executive Officer, a position he previously held from 1992 to 2008. Weil was highly successful in his previous role, and during Mr. Weil’s tenure, the Company’s revenue grew from less than $50 million to over $1 billion.
An additional change was David L. Kennedy, Vice Chairman, will become Executive Vice Chairman. In this newly created staff role, he will focus on enhancing the operational performance of the Company across all of its business units. Chambrello and Kennedy will report to Weil and will continue to serve on the Board of Directors of Scientific Games. The management changes are effective immediately.
Some of the key intitiatives these changes will help the compnay focus on include further developing the international instant ticket market, where instant ticket sales as a percentage of total lottery revenues are much lower than in North America, with the notable exception of Italy. The Company aims to enhance its business development efforts to better address this significant opportunity in China and other international jurisdictions. Among many other initiatives, the company plans to aggressively target attractive new business models, including lottery private management which offers the opportunity to transform lottery vendors from commodity suppliers to value-added operators.
According to Weil, “With the expansion and redirection of our executive management team, combined with our increasing emphasis on driving innovation in our products and services, I believe Scientific Games is very well positioned for profitable growth. The Company’s investments over the years have provided the assets and platform to aggressively pursue these exciting opportunities, with incremental growth offering the potential to drive meaningful operating leverage. At the same time, we will continue to remain disciplined regarding capital deployment and are highly focused on enhancing free cash flow and return on investment.”
