Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | March 2009 30 “M r. Weidner is no longer with the organization or a member of its board of directors.” In just sixteen words Las Vegas Sands Corp. announced on 9th March that William P Weidner, the man who had helped steer the company through unprecedented global expansion, had gone. It was barely more than one word for each year in LVS’s service. There was no eulogy, no words of thanks for a job well done, just bare fact—as if someone were announcing outgoing and incoming flights at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport. The man who made number 42 last year on Inside Asian Gaming’s Asian Gaming 50 list is, for the time being at least, reduced to an industry footnote. Mr Weidner had been with LVS for nearly 14 years, joining The Venetian in Las Vegas in December 1995 as its President and Chief Operating Officer, before graduating to the equivalent post for the parent company in August 2004. He was sometimes characterised in the media as ‘good cop’ to company founder and chairman Sheldon G Adelson’s ‘bad cop’. References to Mr Adelson as ‘bad cop’ related not to any suggestion of criminality or bad character on his part but to the idea that his was the tough and uncompromising face of the organisation in contrast to Mr Weidner’s more approachable demeanour. It would be a mistake, though, to think Mr Weidner was any kind of soft touch—either for his underlings or for outsiders. Anyone who has ever overheard him on the telephone tearing a strip off a subordinate can attest to that. A spade is a spade His willingness to use earthy terminology such as “shellacking” to describe a bad quarter for LVS in the Macau VIP baccarat market a year or so ago was refreshing. It was especially so in an age when senior executives in most industries are increasingly shy about shooting from the hip and show a tendency to mind their backs and their careers by wrapping themselves in a cocoon of smooth-talking public relations people. Such PR ‘experts’ are usually schooled in the art of speaking at length to the media without saying very much at all. There were signs in the last few years however that Mr Weidner may have become a little too off the cuff for his own good. Most of the incidents related to Macau. First there was his performance on the witness stand last year at the civil court trial in Las Vegas of the case brought by Hong Kong businessman Richard Suen against LVS. Mr Suen was claiming (successfully as it turned out) a success fee from LVS for help in securing LVS’s Macau gaming licence. Lawyers for the plaintiff managed to paint Mr Weidner William P. Weidner departs the LVS stage after nearly a decade and half at the top LVS