The Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers (AGEM) on Thursday announced the creation of the ‘Jens Halle Memorial Award Honouring Excellence in Commercial Gaming Professionalism’. The trade group is also creating the ‘Peter Mead Memorial Award Honouring Excellence in Gaming Media & Communications’.
The two new awards aim respectively to acknowledge the “lasting impacts on the gaming industry” of the two men. Both died suddenly, earlier this year.
Mr Halle (pictured), a long-time Bally Technologies Inc and Novomatic Group executive in Europe, was most recently chief executive of Germany-based casino equipment supplier Merkur Gaming GmbH. He died in May, at the age of 57.
Mr Mead, the founder and publisher of Casino Enterprise Management magazine, died in Las Vegas in June, at the age of 54.
The first Jens Halle Memorial Award will be presented to Mr Halle’s widow, Marietta, and son, Jordi, prior to this year’s Global Gaming Expo (G2E), which will take place at the end of this month. In subsequent years, AGEM will create a nominating panel to recognise one individual annually that “best represents the personal values and professional commitment that Mr Halle was well known for in gaming jurisdictions around world,” the association said in a press release.
The first Peter Mead Memorial Award also will be presented prior to G2E 2015, to Mr Mead’s mother, Solveig Berg. In subsequent years, it will be awarded to “a deserving individual who will come from a qualified pool of gaming journalists or company communications professionals”.
“AGEM is honoured to play a role in recognising Jens and Peter annually during G2E, [a] time when they both enjoyed the global gathering of the gaming industry,” said Marcus Prater, executive director of AGEM. “We look forward to honouring worthy award winners in future years to pay tribute to the tremendous impact they [Jens Halle and Peter Mead] made during their time with us.”
AGEM is a non-profit international trade association representing manufacturers and suppliers of electronic gaming devices, systems, table games, online technology, key components and support products and services for the gaming industry.
