Rumbles of mutiny against International Game Technology CEO Patti Hart have been growing in volume for quite some time. Those growls rose to a shout today with an e-mail blast from The Ader Group, soliciting shareholder proxies for the March 5 meeting at which the IGT board of directors stands for reelection. Former Wall Street analyst Jason Ader is putting forward an insurgent slate led by former IGT CEO Charles Mathewson (a once — and future? — savior of the company), and money men Raymond Brooks and Daniel Silvers. Among current board members only former Harrah’s Entertainment CEO Phil Satre and erstwhile Nevada governor Bob Miller escape Ader’s wrath. With a 3% stock position, Ader might seem to be holding a weak hand but he contends that IGT leadership is barely invested in the company at all: less than 1%, exclusive of options. And 5W Public Relations is aggressively shopping Ader around to prospective interviewers.
Ader’s campaign platform would ground IGT’s Gulfstream V jet, for starters, emphasize expansion into Latin 
America and Asia; re-concentrate the company on selling ‘boxes’; curtail the scope of R&D to highly profitable product lines; raise prices. Calling the last three-and-a-half years at IGT “indefensible,” Ader points to a 20% decline in share value and a concomitant IGT underperformance compared to the NASDAQ and S&P averages. The Great Recession caught IGT in mid-pivot from boxes to server-based gaming. By the time SBG was finally ready for market, casinos were no longer in a position to swap out entire slot floors. Hart pushed the company toward social media and online gambling, a change of course that steered IGT right into Ader’s trap. His bill of indictment cites “failure to focus on the core slot machine and systems business … A lack of casino gaming industry experience in IGT’s Board and executive management ranks [and] a series of costly non-strategic acquisitions.” Ader’s bullet points are made by real bullets, too. Hart’s dubious acquisitions include $113 million for defunct Entraction Holdings and the controversial half-billion dollars spent to purchase Double Down Interactive. Although he stops short of calling for Hart’s head on a platter, asking simply for fiercer board oversight (“Our nominees also intend to work closely with Ms. Hart” is the ominous phrasing), Ader is only too happy to cite the negative share-price performance of Telocity, bankrupt Excite@Home, and Pinnacle Systems during her presidencies, finally piling on her role in the abortive Scott Thompson tenure at Yahoo. Shareholders are rarely inclined to upset the applecart, so maybe a strong 1Q13, buoyed by slot-route sales in Illinois and Double Down’s rising numbers (it was predicted to go the abyssal route of Zynga and hasn’t) will rescue Hart from Ader’s bite.
Although his District of Columbia project is exempt from property taxes by dint of sitting on federal land, Donald Trump still remains liable for $3 million “possessory interest tax” annually. That was, however, more than the orange-coiffed casino shill could bear. He tried to scam a free ride off of Washington, D.C. Needless to say, that would spur a stampede of other businessmen demanding that their possessory-interest imposts be refunded. And, equally unsurprisingly, city fathers told Trump to pay The Man. As The Associated Press obliquely observed, the spectacle of a self-proclaimed zillionaire cadging for a handout found little sympathy.
