Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2009 22 recently it has diversified into bowling alleys, golf driving ranges, amusement facilities, cinemas and other leisure-related business. Maruhan invested in the Macau casino resort Ponte 16, the joint venture between Success Universe Group (formerly Macau Success) and Dr Stanley Ho’s SJM. Ponte 16 opened in February 2008. Maruhan also opened a commercial bank in Cambodia last year. Maruhan’s founder, Korean-born Han Chang-Woo, was placed at number 20 on ‘Japan’s Richest’ list 2009 with an estimated personal net worth of US$1 billion. That was up one place on his 2008 ranking, but his wealth was down US$600 million compared to 12 months ago thanks to the credit crisis. When father of six Mr Han, now aged 78, heldaparty to celebrate the 50thanniversary of Maruhan (which is still privately owned), he did so in style. He invited 2,000 guests and hired the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra to perform for them. on their hands arrive early at the casino to occupy seats at the crowded tables, and then charge eager gamblers arriving later up to US$700 for those seats on the weekend. One of the management’s innovations has been to make the whole complex a non-smoking area, which must also make it more pleasant for the chair-minding old folk. For the young or the young at heart, the operating company has diversified and now also owns High 1 Ski Resort, a premium slope on 925,000 square metres of land next door to the hotel and casino. Cho Ki-Song, the company President, has beenthemastermindbehindtheseandother innovations, transforming Kangwon Land from a state-run monopoly to a successful private company. He is the first president of 21 (21) Putera Sampoerna Founder, MANSION (Gibraltar) Ltd 22 (22) Han Chang-Woo Chairman and CEO, Maruhan Corp 23 (38) Cho Ki-Song President, Kangwon Land audience for much of the sponsorship. Mr Sampoerna has funded his betting venture from the family fortune which was built on some of Indonesia’s more traditional industries including palm oil and rubber production. Later, it expanded into tobacco, automobile and telecom interests. Mr Sampoerna sold the family’s clove kretek cigarette business to Altria (formerly Philip Morris) for more than US$5 billion in 2005—a move that gained him a position on Forbes magazine’s Indonesian Rich List. Since his father’s death in 1994, Mr Sampoerna has been professionalising his empire by bringing in executives from Singapore, Taiwan, the US and Korea. He has also shown interest in luxury casinos with his purchase (and later sale) of London-based Les Ambassadeurs casino. Mr Putera’s son, Michael, who runs a family investment vehicle, Sampoerna Strategic, is a professional poker player. His daughter Michelle manages the family’s philanthropy, including the Sampoerna Foundation, which was established to assist with a range of social projects including the improvement of public education in Indonesia, the training of teachers and support of ‘model’ schools. J a p a n e s e pachinko parlour operator Maruhan Corp. appears to be weathering the recession affecting Japan and the wider world. It recorded sales of 2.5 trillion yen (US$25 billion) for the fiscal year ending March 2009. It made a profit of 49.6 billion yen (US$540 million) during the same period. Maruhan has 244 gaming parlours across the country and employs more than 12,500 people. The company was set up in 1953 and incorporated in 1957. More Kangwon Land’s main hotel casino, which opened in April 2003, is the only one of South Korea’s 17 casinos open to Korean nationals. Despite being a gruelling four-hour drive to the east of the national capital Seoul and containing just 132 gaming tables and 960 slot machines, it is one of the highest grossing casinos in the world in real terms, bringing in the equivalent of around US$1 billion in revenue annually. Locals inform Inside Asian Gaming that Kangwon Land is so popular among South Koreans that hard-up pensioners with time Netherlands-born Indonesian tycoon Putera Sampoerna is the owner of MANSION, which runs an online casino, video poker, sports book and betting exchange from Gibraltar. MANSION has become a truly global online gaming brand in the last few years, with a customer base stretching from Europe to East Asia. A sign of that global reach is the company’s shirt sponsorship for Tottenham Hotspur, an English Premier League soccer team. On the club’s second and third strip this season, the MANSION logo is accompanied by Chinese characters, making explicit the target As Japan prospered during the 1950s, pachinko also thrived and Mr Han did well enough in the 1960s to move into the bowling industry. At one time he owned the nation’s largest alley. In the 1970s, Mr Han returned his focus to pachinko and rode the wave of the 1980s economic boom, which left him well positioned to take advantage of the long slide in Japanese asset prices in the 1990s and allowed him to continue building his company and increasing his share of pachinko parlours. Even as Japan struggled to regain its feet after the decade-long economic slowdown, Maruhan Corp prospered. MrHanexpandedhisparloursintocentral locations as space became available; he built multi-floor emporiums that lure customers with innovations including non-smoking sections, free parking and improved odds of winning. The cash flow from these large, successful outlets helped diversify Maruhan into the conglomerate it is today. the resort hired from the private sector—all his predecessors were former government officials. In his previous roles, Mr Cho created and led LG Electronics and LG Philips Display into globally recognised brands. Mr Cho has his heart in the project. He was actually raised in Kangwon province, where the resort is located, and is dedicated to helping improve economic development in the area.