Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2012 50 Asian Gaming 50 – 2012 47 Jack Lam Chairman Jimei Group Jack Lam may not be quite the force in the “new” Macau as he surely was in the old, but the chairman of Jimei Group still sits atop an empire consisting of holdings in property investment, financial services and tour and travel, and with a longtime presence in gaming in the region consisting of a casino cruise ship, resort casinos in the Philippines, VIP rooms in Macau and a high- end room in one of Seven Luck’s popular foreigners-only casinos in Seoul. In the Macau junket sector, which accounts for much of the heft of Mr Lam’s bulging portfolio, Jimei’s VIP rooms are believed to generate about 9% of total rolling chip turnover, and as a measure of Mr Lam’s prominence, he is one of the few junketeers to run a property in his own right, having taken over the Casino Oriental at the former Mandarin Oriental back in 2009 with the blessing of its owner, Stanley Ho’s Sociedade de Jogos de Macau. Located under the roof of the renamed Grand Lapa is certainly his most imaginative. Mr Lam had been running gambling packages to the Philippines from Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea for years and cultivating relationships along the way with politicians and government officials that paid off with VIP rooms in casinos in Pasay City and Cebu and a controlling interest in the Fort Ilocondia Resort and Hotel on the South China Sea in northern Luzon. But it’s the Fontana complex, located in the Clark Special Economic Zone about 80 kilometers north of the capital, that has grown to become Jimei’s flagship—a collection of family-style holiday villas and time shares, a hotel, a waterpark, golf courses, fitness facilities, a sauna and spa, restaurants, meeting and convention space and a boutique casino—a leisure city within a city, catering both to locals and to a Chinese and Korean clientele that Jimei has come to know intimately over the years. Fontana is also a destination, interestingly enough, whose aggregation of mixed uses prefigures in some respectsthemultibillion-dollarEntertainment City currently under construction in Manila and on which such great hopes ride for the island nation’s tourism. Hotel, the refurbished and rebranded Jimei Casino operates as a “satellite” of SJM in exchange for a share of revenues. But the Philippines remains the most audacious of the investments the 51-year- old Guangdong native has pursued, and Fontana Leisure Parks, a sprawling holiday getaway he’s assembled around 300 hectares of a former US military base north of Manila, 48 David Chow CEO NewMacau Landmark Development to commence. In its current, largely unoccupied state, Fisherman’s Wharf resembles a relic of the old, obsolete Macau though it only opened in 2006. In 2009, several hedge funds that had invested in the project—hoping it would cash in on Macau’s gaming and tourism boom and go on to a stock market listing— including Och Ziff and TPG-Axon, accepted a heavily discounted buyout of some HK$400 million that they had loaned it. The good news is that the site, on the southwest side of the city’s Outer Harbour, is one of the best pieces of real estate in town. A revamp of the site—if it ever happens—could help the area become the tourist hub it was always meant to be. Also slated for a major refurb is Mr Chow’s Landmark Macau Hotel and the co-located Pharaoh’s Palace Casino, which likewise have a great location on Friendship Avenue, along which Sands Macao, StarWorld, Wynn Macau and the Grand Lisboa also sit. Landmark does considerably better business than Fisherman’s Wharf, though it, too, could benefit from a makeover to boost its competitiveness relative to its recently arrived neighbors. Last year, Mr Chow, a Hong Kong native and formerMacau lawmaker, raisedaHK$1.8 billion (US$232 million) syndicated bank loan for investments in Macau, including giving the Landmark, and presumably also Fisherman’s Wharf, their facelifts. The Landmark renovation is scheduled to take a year and includes plans to create Macau’s biggest sauna—which in this part of the world is a cross between a spa and a gentleman’s club—within the property. Like the renovation of Fisherman’s Wharf, however, the work is still pending. When Mr Chow finally does get to making over his properties he could well bounce back in style. There’s still an important segment of the Macau market that wants upscale accommodations with a distinctively Chinese management and service culture, and given Mr Chow’s local connections and mindset, as well as the prime locations of his properties, he is ideally suited to fill that niche. David Chow first announced the idea of installing a dinosaur museum at his ailing Fisherman’s Wharf theme park in Macau in 2007. In 2009, he said the museum would be part of a HK$3 billion (US$385 million) redevelopment of the facility scheduled for completion within two years that would also include two hotels, a yacht club and health center. That redevelopment has yet