Inside Asian Gaming

October 2014 inside asian gaming 41 The rationale for possibly delaying Manila Bay Resorts is understandable for different reasons, all of them tangled up with the inability to date of Mr Okada’s Philippine subsidiaries to comply with a requirement under Philippine law that restricts foreign ownership of land rights to 40%. Negotiations with a number of local land partners have fallen through, and the latest, involving Century Properties Group, a Philippine developer, is mired in litigation that currently prevents Mr Okada from seeking fresh partners. Complicating this are allegations that Mr Okada and a number of Philippine and Japanese nationals affiliated with him had set up straw companies to evade the ownership requirement. Intertwined in this controversy is an alleged bribery scheme involving a prominent local businessman, the government’s former top gaming regulator and others. Mr Okada’s Philippine troubles cost him both his seat on the Feature Of course, where big casinos with major resort components are concerned, opening dates tend to be moving targets under the best conditions, and the blueprint for City of Dreams certainly is big. Plans call for six hotels at full build-out, three in the first phase: a Crown Towers, a Hyatt and Asia’s first hotel bearing New York City’s well-known Nobu brand. board of directors of Wynn Resorts, a company he helped found, and his considerable stake in the company, though he and his affiliates deny any wrongdoing and have maintained that Manila Bay Resorts is moving ahead toward an opening in 2015, a forecast that now looks to be in doubt. When it does open it will be on the largest plot assigned to the Entertainment City licenses—44 hectares, for which plans call for 1,000 hotel rooms in the first phase, a domed pool with a Las Vegas-style nightclub and beach club, a luxury spa, 22 restaurants and a 30,000-square-meter casino with 500 table games and 3,000 machine games. However, the Philippine government has stated repeatedly that it will not be permitted to open until the land ownership issue is resolved. Mr Okada, in the meantime, is fighting Wynn’s actions against him and that dispute is in litigation in the US.