Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | May 2010 16 Cover Story A mid the justifiable razzamatazz surrounding the opening of the ambitious and impressive Marina Bay Sands integrated gaming resort in Singapore, there’s a multi-billion dollar question. How big is the Singapore gaming market going to be? Elsewhere in this edition, CLSA Asia Pacific Markets, an independent brokerage and investment group, offers its latest assessment on the city-state’s new casino market. Here, Inside Asian Gaming gives the perspective of a key member of the Las Vegas Sands Corp (LVS) leadership masterminding the company’s expansion into Singapore. Michael Leven, President and Chief Operating Officer of LVS, spoke about Singapore gaming revenue, the thorny question of table quota in Macau, and about the company’s aspirations for an integrated resort (IR) in Japan. Inside Asian Gaming: What’s your anticipated return on investment for the Marina Bay Sands project? Michael Leven: Our expectations are to get at least a 20% return on investment [per year]. The investment is US$5.7 billion, so that’s US$1.14 billion a year over a five-year period to achieve payback. There are various ways of looking at return on investment. If you want to dig into it, and to look at our return on equity, we had US$3.6 billion of financing, and we put up US$2.1 billion dollars [equity]. So a 20% return on equity would only be US$450 million a year, roughly. We prefer to look at the return on total investment. Do you anticipate most of that return coming from the tables? I think initially most of our return will come from the tables. Safe Harbour Michael Leven of LVS tells IAG why he thinks Marina Bay Sands will be a big success Michael Leven