Inside Asian Gaming

September 2013 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 25 The Asian Gaming 50 – 2013 Angela Leong took some time this month from her campaign for re-election to a third term in Macau’s Legislative Assembly to rewrite the future of Macau’s largest casino operator. It came in the form of an announcement from SJM Holdings that she had agreed to transfer to SJM an interest in 18 hectares of land she controls adjoining the company’s Cotai location, effectively tripling its area. SJM’s was the smallest of the sites the government had awarded the six casino licensees in the booming resort district. With the stroke of her pen the company had gone from being Wynn Macau’s little next door neighbors to lords of a demesne where just about anything that money can build is possible. It was, needless to say, a monumental deal, and Ms Leong’s position in it was unique because as an executive director of the company she held decision-making power on both ends, not to mention that as SJM Holding’s largest individual shareholder she stands to benefit in all kinds of ways. Such is the power the youngest and last of Stanley Ho’s consorts wields in the largest casino market in the world—“ Say Tai ,” (“Fourth Wife”), as the venerable tycoon calls her after the traditional Cantonese manner. She was one of the movers behind a joint venture recently announced with Gianni Versace to develop a HK$2.5 billion (US$322 million), 270-room Versace-branded hotel at the Cotai site. The famed Italian fashion house is hugely popular among China’s brand- obsessed nouveau riche, and SJM’s will be only the third hotel in the world to carry its name. It is one of the unique features her land deal has made possible, and Ms Leong is said to have been its inspiration, the idea coming to her a decade ago when Palazzo Versace in Australia’s Gold Coast was her home away from home 13 Angela Leong Executive Director, SJMHoldings Managing Director Sociedade de Jogos de Macau during the SARS epidemic. “We saw the Versace hotel was a beautiful, elegant, world-class hotel,” she said at the signing ceremony earlier this month, Donatella Versace by her side. “I thought it was 100 percent worth it to have such a hotel in Macau.” One of south China’s wealthiest individuals, with a net worth estimated by Forbes at US$2.3 billion, her influence reaches into every facet of the SJM/STDM empire. She owns one of the largest personal equity stakes in STDM—the forerunner of SJM Holdings’ casino operating arm and the listed company’s majority shareholder— and serves as a director. She also controls 10% of the operating company, Sociedade de Jogos de Macau, and is its managing director. She is also vice chair of the Macau Jockey Club. Her property holdings, described as “vast” by The Wall Street Journal , include a significant interest in L’Arc Macau, a 56-story colossus containing a hotel, private residences, retail shops and a 10,000-square-meter casino that operates as one of 14 independent “satellites” of SJM’s license. A Guangzhou native, daughter of an army officer, a dancer by training, she’s been as quick a study as they come in the school of casino operations, the years she spent at Stanley Ho’s side having equipped her well to become a solid contributor to SJM’s growth in an increasingly competitive marketplace, reflected, in part, by the fact that for several years now she has headed the trade group representing the city’s junket operators and promoters. Her impact on the civic and social life of the region has been similarly profound. She’s been the directly elected representative of a pro-casino coalition in the Legislative Assembly since 2005 and she holds a seat on the Jiangxi Provincial and Zhuhai Municipal committees of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Her charity work includes a longstanding involvement with Po Leung Kuk, a 130-year-old institution founded in Hong Kong to provide services to needy women and girls. Michael Mecca joined Galaxy Entertainment Group in March 2009 in the run-up to the opening of the US$2.1 billion GalaxyMacau resort on Cotai. His mission, said Deputy Chairman Francis Lui, was to take the company“to the next level in its development as a leading Asian gaming corporation”. The central element of that mission was positioning what had until then been a primarily VIP-centric company with StarWorld Hotel and Casino on the Macau peninsula to serve the mass market on Cotai. And 14 Michael Mecca President and COO Galaxy Entertainment Group Galaxy Macau’s arrival in May 2011 could not have been timed better, coming just as China’s burgeoning middle class created a fundamental shift in the dynamics of the market away fromVIP and toward the mass. Play at Macau’s cash tables is now growing at around triple the rate of credit- based VIP play. Citywide, the mass market generated MOP55.6 billion ($6.95 billion) in revenue in the first half of 2013, having sustained year-on-year revenue growth of 30% or better for 10 straight quarters. The shift has also been revolutionizing industry profitability. As cash gambling is conducted directly between the player and the casino—no junket intermediaries and VIP room promoters to be cut in for 40-45% of the win—after-tax margins are around three