Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | June 2012 6 Cover Story casino in the Southern Hemisphere, Crown Entertainment Complex, as it’s now called, in Melbourne, Australia’s second city and capital of the state of Victoria. The inheritance includes the country’s second-largest casino in terms of total gaming positions, Burswood Entertainment Complex in Perth in Western Australia. Looking at his biggest investments to date, James clearly believes his destiny resides with resort-scale casinos. He’s spent hugely on them, and aggressively, and so far not all that successfully. With The Star set to finally harvest the fruits of three years and some A$870 million in capital investment designed to transform it into a premier destination for Asia’s gambling elite—placing it in direct competition with Crown, which bills itself as “one of the largest single-site VIP operations in the world”—his desire to prove something may never be more urgent than it is now. To do this he’s prepared to relinquish the family’s last significant media holdings. Opposing him is the embattled board of directors of fledgling Echo Entertainment, which had been led until this month by Chairman John Story, a lawyer and former chairman of Australian betting giant Tabcorp Holdings. The CEO, Larry Mullin, is an American who served as president of the US$1.2 billion Borgata in Atlantic City before joining Tabcorp as chief executive of its Casino Division in 2009, just as the remodeling of The Star was getting under way. Mr Mullin’s division included three casinos in the northeastern state of Queensland: Jupiters Hotel & Casino on the Gold Coast and Treasury Casino & Hotel in Brisbane, both near the NSW border, and Jupiters Hotel & Casino farther up the Pacific coast in Townsville. Echowas created only last spring in advance of Tabcorp’s decision He [Kerry Packer] bequeathed to his son the largest casino in the Southern Hemisphere, Crown Entertainment Complex, as it’s now called, in Melbourne, Australia’s second city and capital of the state of Victoria. Larry Mullin