The issuing of a £100 million in new shares by Playtech has enabled its billionaire founder to increase his holding to close to 50% of the company.

Teddy Sagi, the founder of Playtech, raised his shareholding in the online gambling software provider to 43.7 per cent after agreeing to underwrite a £100m share placing to fund new acquisitions.

Playtech announced that the placement of 46.5m shares at 215p, had been placed with Brickington, Mr Sagi’s investment vehicle, which already had 40.3 per cent of Playtech, and institutional shareholders.

The placing was at a discount of 2.5 per cent to Tuesday’s closing share price. Although by Wednesday the shares had declined 2.3 percent to 215.5p.

Brickington is underwriting the placement at no fee, and offered to take up any or all of the 27.8m shares available to institutions that are not purchased and this would have meant that the Israeli billionaire’s stake could have increased to 49.9 percent. However institutions did take up two-thirds of the rights leaving Sagi with an increased stake of 43.7p.

With Playtech having a joint venture with William Hill which has had encountered several problems this year including staff walkouts along with the increase stake of the founder some investors are questioning whether the company is a good investment.

Playtech has claimed that it is raising the extra funds in order to invest in future joint venture and make acquisitions that are values at between £10 and £40 million.