Inside Asian Gaming

DECEMBER 2017 INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 21 Cotai in Macau has emerged as Asia’s new gaming hub over the past decade and to lobby for the following year. Strangely, no-one has ever contacted us to complain about being ranked too high! However, this year two people even asked not to be on the list, for fear of the exposure and profile it creates – perhaps placing a target on their back! In the interests of the credibility and accuracy of the list, these requests were politely declined. Decisions This year we welcome two new members to the selection panel, Mr Michael Zhu, Senior Vice President of International Operations Planning and Analysis for The Innovation Group, and Mr David Green, former gaming regulator with the Independent Gambling Authority in South Australia and CEO at Newpage Consulting – a Macau-based gaming consultancy firm. Mr Green is also Chairman of Silver Heritage Limited and recused himself from any discussions regarding executives from that company. Over the last decade the Asian Gaming Power 50 has become the definitive list of the industry’s most important people – and as such we play a vital role in the industry and have a responsibility to simply get it right. Keen followers of the list will remember that last year we completely overhauled the Power 50 ranking methodology and in an effort to be more scientific and objective in the rankings introduced a numerical “Power Score” for each person on the list. This proved popular and we’ve continued this tradition in 2017. Power Score points arise from a number of factors including the GGR of the person’s organization (or a surrogate comparative measure if necessary), a weighted “carving up” of those points between the top senior executives with key policy control of that organization, adjustments for whether the person is hired or has a major equity position, their length of tenure, how active in business initiatives the person has been in the prior 12 months, the long-term gaming pedigree of the person, the jurisdiction in which he or she operates and many more. Some factors are necessarily subjective, but we’ve always assigned a points value in an attempt to be objective. We have ASIAN GAMING POWER 50 2 0 1 7