HKJC hires Ladbrokes sports director Jay

LADBROKES SPORTS AND FOOTBALL director Patrick Jay has quit the business for a role heading trading operations for the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC).

Jay will leave Ladbrokes at the end of the year, and take up his new position with HKJC early in 2010, where he will be charged with overseeing trading operations and expanding HKJC’s traded sports product portfolio.

The move follows close to five and a half years after Jay began at Ladbrokes, where he spent a year and a half as general manager for the UK bookmakers’ sportsbook before taking up his current position.

Prior to that, Jay cut his trading teeth during nearly nine years with financial and sports spreadbetting operator IG Index, where he was head of trading and associate director.

One of the biggest five betting organisations in the world based on turnover, HKJC holds a monopoly on pari-mutuel horse race betting and on fixed-odds betting on football matches, the only legal forms of gambling in Hong Kong other than the government-run weekly lottery.

It is the largest single taxpayer to the Hong Kong government, legally mandated to return a minimum of US$1bn in tax revenues a year.

Jay, HKJC and Ladbrokes declined to comment.