Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | February 2011 18 W hat more can be said about the bizarre succession battle over control of STDM, the parent company to the Macau casino operator SJM Holdings, founded by Dr Stanley Ho? Well, perhaps something about the plight of the institutional and private investors who pumped the equivalent of US$494 million into SJM in a partial flotation on the Hong Kong market in June 2008. It amounted to approximately 25% of SJM’s equity. If the Ho family are willing to treat each other as badly as reported in the Hong Kong media in their jockeying for control of SJM’s parent STDM, it doesn’t say very much for the prospects of those minority shareholders in SJM. SJM is the publicly traded holding company whose operating subsidiaries run the largest casino operation in Macau. The SJM gaming operation consists of 20 SJM-licensed casinos (four of them ‘core’ properties owned and managed directly by SJM) and four slot machine lounges aimed mainly at local players. Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau (STDM) holds a 55.7% stake in SJM (through a 99.99% owned subsidiary, STDM SJM Succession Stanley and the Women Why the Motherland rather than the Ho family’s extended matriarchy could have the final word in the STDM/SJM succession Stanley Ho poses for a photo at Government House in Hong Kong after receiving the Grand Bauhinia Medal—Hong Kong’s highest civic award—in November last year.Pictured with him are (from left to right) daughters Florinda (from third wife Ina Chan) and Alice (from fourth wife Angela Leong); Angela Leong; and three children from second wife Lucina Laam—Lawrence Ho, Pansy Ho and Maisy Ho.Dr Ho’s first wife, Clementina Leitao, passed away in 2004.