Inside Asian Gaming

March 2011 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 39 and people skills to be able to grin and bear such problems for the sake of corporate harmony. Some in Macau wonder if Pansy Ho has the instincts and people skills to be able to grin and bear such problems for the sake of corporate harmony. Such diplomatic skills may well be needed by the next head of STDM/SJM, and not just because of family rifts. STDM/SJM is more than just a commercial enterprise. As explained in our February issue, STDM, with its long tradition in the market, is in some senses a commercial proxy for the interests of the Macau government and the central government in Beijing. The continued pre- eminence of STDM/SJM is really about the maintenance of a Chinese rather than Las Vegan heart beating at the centre of the Macau gaming market. That’s as much a political issue as it is a commercial one. Dr Ho in his pomp might have been able to charm and persuade his three surviving consorts and the respective children from his four families to toe a unified family line. A Dr Ho pressured by age and illness arguably has a harder job of acting as coherent umpire in the matter of the division or disposal of his STDM shares. All three factions of the family (wives two and three and their children were allies at the time IAG went to press) and their representatives have been busy briefing the media and spinning on the STDM share issue. The fact that Pansy Ho was recently being portrayed in the Hong Kong media as intransigent and the person responsible for preventing a deal may be partly a sign of the success of other factions in presenting their version of events. Could Ms Ho’s personality, rather than pure circumstance, be one of the reasons she couldn’t get a backroom deal done on the shares? What we don’t know is how much horse-trading went on behind the scenes before family two and three made its pre- emptive strike on grabbing control of Dr Ho’s STDM shares in January. The insiders say Pansy Ho’s instinct is often to stick her neck out and lead from the front, rather than getting associates lined up on her side and convincing them it was their idea all along. Ms Ho may wish to consider reading or re-reading ‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tzu. Her father, Dr Ho, seems to have been an avid student of, and practitioner in, the ideas of that work. His favourite sentence is probably: “The victorious strategist only seeks victory after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.” Dr Ho had a reputation for being as tough as old boots in private business dealings—but only to equals, and only in the run up to getting a backroom deal done. He has been very careful in his long career to cultivate a kindly and paternalistic image in public—especially to underlings. In China, that’s important. Word soon gets round if Fourth but not last in line—Angela Leong Win first, then fight—Sun Tzu