Camelot Group Plc is really enjoying itself running Britain’s national lottery – and why not? – in one year it has already raised ú1,000m for good causes – but it would like to be seen as a real company, with a life that continues after its seven-year lottery franchise runs out. Reporting first half pre-tax profits of ú36.2m on turnover of ú2,510m for the 24 weeks to September 16 – and payment of its first dividend to its five happy shareholders, it said it could be interested in branching out into running overseas lotteries. Chief executive Tim Holley told Reuters that Camelot wanted to use its expertise to take advantage of other business opportunities – there have not been too many glitches for such an enormous undertaking – and he said that running other lotteries would be the most logical expansion. Any such expansion of its operations would require permission from the UK government. What we’ve done here is to invest money and management to create a lottery that is considered by others in the industry to be very successful and gotten off the ground remarkably well and remarkably quickly, Holley said. Camelot’s seven-year licence to run the national lottery currently precludes it from entering any other businesses. The licence says we shall be a single purpose company dedicated to running the national lottery, Holley said. The initial dividend is ú9.5m in total, shared between De La Rue Group Plc, Cadbury Schweppes Plc, GTech Holdings Corp, Racal Electronics Plc, and ICL Plc. The unexpectedly enornmous success of the lottery is underlined by the fact that the plan called for the first payout to be made in year three. Cadbury, GTech, De La Rue and Racal each has 22.5%, while ICL has the other 10%.
