Executive selling shares

Thursday, March 4, 2004 | 11:13 a.m.

The chief executive of gaming equipment manufacturer Shuffle Master Inc. is selling 20 percent of his stock and option holdings in the company in compliance with a corporate governance plan, the company announced Tuesday.

Mark Yoseloff, chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas company, is selling those holdings as part of a plan that allows corporate insiders to establish prearranged written plans to buy or sell a specified number of shares of company stock over a predetermined period of time to avoid opportunistic selling.

In a statement from the company, Yoseloff said he intends to use a portion of the proceeds to exercise additional options and hold the resulting shares.

Yoseloff could not be reached for comment Wednesday on how many shares and options he expects to sell and what the resulting gross proceeds would be.

According to a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission late last month, Yoseloff holds 133,657 shares of stock and 429,853 options exercisable within 60 days, representing 3.3 percent of all shares and options.

Shuffle Master stock closed Wednesday at $39.29 a share, down 20 cents from Tuesday's close.