Inside Asian Gaming

September 2012 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 27 Asian Gaming 50 – 2012 Manila, the highest-grossing casino in the Philippines, and increasing competition across East and Southeast Asia. PAGCOR’s total revenues are up 23% through the first five months of the year, leading the agency to confidently forecast P44 billion in total revenue when 2012 is said and done (US$1 billion), a 20% increase year on year if it’s achieved—and 70% of it, the company says, will come from gaming operations. More important for the longer term is the positive impact this is having on PAGCOR’s relationship with the government, for which the corporation is the third-largest source of revenue after the bureaus of Internal Revenue and Customs. No doubt it has strengthened Mr Naguiat’s voice in the councils of President Benigno Aquino, who appointed him in July 2010 and whose office directly oversees the agency, and this makes it likely that his influence on the most pressing issues facing the agency, and the future of gaming in the Philippines, will be considerable. Topping the list is the increasing pressure PAGCOR faces to relinquish its operations, divest itself of the Casino Filipino franchise, and concentrate on its role as regulator. Pro-Aquino lawmakers are pushing just such a bill, and it has support, many seeing privatization as a necessity given the dramatic expansion that is on the way in the form of the US$5 billion Entertainment City project. Mr Naguiat has his hands full, too, with cleaning up PAGCOR’s image and ensuring foreigners that Philippines gaming is a safe investment, a daunting task in a country that last year ranked 129th out of 180 in Transparency International’s “Corruptions Perception Index”—tied with Armenia and the Dominican Republic and behind states like Bolivia, Mozambique and Kazakhstan. It was only in recent weeks that lawmakers introduced a bill to finally include casinos in the country’s anti-money-laundering regulations. The regime of his predecessor, Ephraim Genuino, hasn’t made things easy. The former chairman faces a raft of corruption charges as part of an investigation implicating dozens of former PAGCOR officials. It’s claimed that millions of dollars in public funds were misused or have gone missing. Shady dealing at the property level have been another problem. It was alleged last year that some Casino Filipino managers were working in cahoots with gamblers in a scheme that is believed to have cost the government tens of millions. 24 Yasushi Shigeta President and CEO Angel Group Baccarat is by far the biggest earner in Macau, the world’s most lucrative casino gaming destination. More recently, it has also been the saving grace of the Las Vegas Strip, where following the onset of the global financial crisis, baccarat has bucked the overall declining trend to become the highest grossing table game, driven by the insatiable appetite of Asian players the world over. Clearly, there is too much at stake to risk the game being compromised by security threats, dealer mistakes or manufacturing errors. Angel Playing Cards Co has become the world’s biggest supplier of casino playing cards in large part because it is considered best-suited to ensuring the integrity of baccarat. It does this by providing not only playing cards manufactured to its highly exacting standards, but also a revolutionary electronic baccarat shoe, the ANGEL EYE. More than 7,500 ANGEL EYE units have been deployed at casinos worldwide. Under Yasushi Shigeta’s stewardship, Angel Group has maintained and built on its precious reputation for quality control in the manufacturing of its products. Angel Playing Cards are acknowledged in the Asian gaming industry for having the lowest failure rate of any product in that category. One Macau operator reports that Angel’s pre-shuffled product has an eerror- free record of over 99.9%. That reliability has translated into sales. Angel is dominant in Macau, where the company is estimated to have 90% of the market. Regionally, Angel says it has an 80% share of the Asian and Australian markets and has risen to become the biggest supplier of playing cards to the global casino industry. Mr Shigeta’s professional background in management consultancy—he entered the sector after graduating with a degree in information science from Kyoto University in 1990—helped him with overseeing quality-related issues when he joined Angel three years later. He worked his way up from middle management to become a director in 1995, finally being appointed to the top job in 2005. After assuming the CEO position, Mr Shigeta led the crucially important development of the ANGEL EYE shoe, which has gone on to revolutionize the game of baccarat in three important ways: 1) it has done away with the cheating technique of “card switching”; 2) it has greatly reduced dealer payout mistakes, hence decreasing losses for casinos; and 3) whereas previously game results were recorded on paper, the ANGEL EYE has made it possible to control data management and display game results on an electronic scoreboard. Small wonder then that the ANGEL EYE was the judges’ overwhelming choice for “Best Table Utility Product” in Inside Asian Gaming ’s Supplier Awards – 2012 .