Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming september 2016 32 Asian Gaming POWER 50 2 0 1 6 Lee Choong Yan PRESIDENT AND CEO Genting Malaysia Power 1,101 last 17 Score year Claims to fame Safeguards Genting corporate heirloom Oversaw Resorts World Genting’s US$2.5 billion upgrade 24 Hong Kong conglomerates Far East Consortium and Chow Tai Fook Enterprises that defeated James Packer’s bid to win a license for an integrated resort in Brisbane that would have driven Echo out of its last monopoly market. The consortium’s Queen’s Wharf Brisbane is slated to begin construction next year on a AU$3 billion entertainment, recreation and residential district that will remake the Queensland capital’s riverfront. At the aging Jupiter’s Hotel & Casino on the Gold Coast the partners are investing in something similar in scale, fine-tuning a AU$2 billion master plan that envisions 3,000 rooms in up to five hotels. These are investments that will allow Star Entertainment to dominate Australia’s northern Pacific market with its greater proximity to the Asian players on whom the future of gaming in the country depends. Mr Bekier isn’t taking his eye off Sydney either. His flagship, The Star, is taking market share both at the VIP and mass ends, and plans are to pump AU$1 billion into the resort in the form of 1,000 more hotel rooms, more VIP space and other attractions. It used to be Echo Entertainment, the perennial also-ran to Crown Resorts in Australia’s two-horse casino race. It’s The Star Entertainment Group now and a serious challenger to the Packers’ long reign at the top of the market. That’s the difference a CEO can make – and Matt Bekier has taken all of two years and a few months to do it. A numbers guy by training – he was Tabcorp’s Chief Financial Officer and held the same post at Echo before landing the top job in 2014 – he’s proven to be a solid operator, delivering two straight years of profit growth for the three-casino group. But it’s as a strategist and a dealmaker that he’s really turned the company around. His biggest coup to date is the partnership he’s secured with Matt Bekier CEO AND MANAGING DIRECTOR The Star Entertainment Group Power 1,181 last 26 Score year Claims to fame Has turned around Australia’s second- largest casino company Guiding force behind investments that are remaking the Sydney, Brisbane and Gold Coast markets 23