NHS Loto chief quits as ticket sales resume

Pascal & Co, operator of charity lottery the NHS Loto, has lost chief executive David Lim, who has returned to Toronto to continue his work as a lottery consultant.

Pascal & Co, operator of charity lottery the NHS Loto, has lost chief executive David Lim, who has returned to Toronto to continue his work as a lottery consultant.

It is unclear how Lim will be replaced. The company says that a colleague of Lim, David Woo, was filling the post of acting chief executive. However, Woo denies he has ever worked for the company. It is understood that Woo is a director of Stenworld, the company which bought a 51 per cent share of Pascal last November.

Lim was recruited last November to attract funding for Pascal, which planned a national UK launch of NHS Loto with a 20m marketing budget. The financing was to come from a rights issue by Malaysian company Sin Heng Chan, a local feed-milling operation, which would use the funds to buy Stenworld. However, there have been delays on the rights issue exacerbated by potential investors’ concerns about the legal status of NHS Loto in the UK after it was deregistered by the Borough of Kensington & Chelsea in August (MW August 16).

The National Hospital Trust, the charity for which NHS Loto raises money, has now registered with several other local authorities. This week, NHS Loto has started selling lottery tickets again after an absence of over a month.