Article Excerpt:
TWST: Can we start with a little history and an overview of the company?Mr. Charlier: The company is the result of a merger that took place in September 2002. The origin was a French company called Bourgogne et Grasset (B&G) based in Burgundy, which was created in 1923 and which had been specializing on jetons and plaques, the European equivalent of casino chips, and then later also on American casino chips. This company used to belong to my father-in-law. It was put up for sale in 1993 and it was taken over by two of my friends and myself in 1994 through an LBO. From Paris I moved to this company in Burgundy to be the manager and I was supposed to stay for a year only. Twelve years later I am still the manager of the company and I like it. In 1997 the majority of the company was acquired by a new shareholder with strong financial means and very strong and clear minded strategic determination. This has been key to achieve what we have been able to acomplish since then. B&G had a very strong position in a very narrow market, the casino chip business worldwide, except in the US, so we decided to get into the US by acquiring a local competitor. We acquired The Bud Jones Company, a Las Vegas based company, also specializing in casino gaming chips. We bought it in October 2000. At that time, Bud Jones had a very strong competitor, another US company called Paul-Son Gaming Supplies based also in Las Vegas. To make a long story short, in September 2002 these three companies made what's called a reverse acquisition and ended up as one company, which at that time was called Paul-Son Gaming Corporation, with the former shareholders of B&G being the majority shareholders of the whole group. This group has one subsidiary in the US and one subsidiary in France, plus another one in Mexico for production. This merger has brought together three companies that are particularly strong and experienced in the field of gaming chips plus other products such as dice, cards, tables, layouts, wheels and other types of equipment. The core business of these three companies and of the group now is the casino chips, and I will get into the casino chips issue a little later. So that's where we are. We have about 700 people and sales of about $50 million.
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