Infinium Labs picks up funding, new staff, a PR agency, and some not-too-kind press, all in a quick 72 hours.
Game industry watchers looking for news about Infinium Labs, the South Florida-based manufacturers of the infamous Phantom PC game console, had plenty of options to choose from over the weekend. First, an article in the Florida-based Sarasota Herald-Tribune revealed a large dividend awarded to several Infinium executives earlier this month. The article reported that Infinium Labs had "dished out a stealthy stock dividend to insiders as soon as it became a publicly traded company, and without bothering to tell the stock-trading public through traditional channels."
According to the Herald-Tribune, on January 7, Infinium took over an existing public company (Global Business Resources) in order to quickly become a publicly traded company, a common tactic. One week later, a notice appeared on the OTC (over-the-counter) Bulletin Board Web site that current stockholders would receive a 5-1 stock-split dividend. According to the Herald-Tribune, the decision to issue the stock split had been made on January 8, the day after the takeover, and had only been disclosed via a one-page letter sent to NASDAQ by the Rochester, New York law firm Nixon Peabody, counsel for the Phantom-maker.