Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2013 42 The Asian Gaming 50 – 2013 owns more than 7% of Echo, and $130 million in infrastructure improvements anchored by a pedestrian bridge linking The Star to Crown’s chosen location across the harbor. It was a bold plan, pegged at A$1.1 billion and promising 1,400 new jobs, and it came with a $250 million sweetener for the state in exchange for 15 more years of exclusivity. Alternatively, Echo offered to build the hotels and everything else, minus the $250 million, if Crown was held to the VIP-only table games casino it originally proposed. “We don’t have a plan to lose, we only have a plan to win,” he said at the time. He lost, of course. The battle lines keep shifting too. In Queensland, where demand has fallen off and Echo’s three casinos are sorely in need of reinvestment, potential rivals are wooing the heavily indebted government with lavish resort proposals in Cairns and in Echo’s Gold Coast and Brisbane markets, Crown among them. But Mr Redmond is not without a few resources of his own. In The Star he has inherited a beautiful property that’s been remade at a cost of $870 million, and he’s managing it well, cutting expenses and growing revenues, and reports are that a joint venture may be in the works with Genting, which has applied for approval to raise its Echo stake above 10%. Michael French joins the ranks of “The Asian Gaming 50” in a big way—he’s the guy in charge of Manila’s new Solaire Resort & Casino, one of the most anticipated gaming destinations to open in the region in recent times. He joined Solaire in January 2012 and led its US$750 million first phase through to completion and its acclaimed debut this March. Over those 14 months the enormous machinery of a casino hotel had to be created almost from scratch. Marketing and advertising strategies had to be devised and executed. Some 4,500 people had to be hired and trained, and every one of them 30 Michael French Chief Operating Officer Solaire Resort & Casino would be counting on him. It’s a role Mr French knows well. He was The Venetian’s senior vice president of operations when it opened on the Las Vegas Strip under Bill Weidner and Brad Stone in 1999, and after six years as an executive and consultant in the US tribal gaming industry, he arrived in Macau in 2007 as SVP operations at Melco Crown Entertainment’s flagship City of Dreams, which he helped shepherd to its opening in 2009. Not surprisingly, he was top of mind when Messrs Weidner and Stone secured the management contract at Solaire and went looking for the talent they would need to make it a success. It’s been a bit of a struggle in the early going. Solaire’s first full month resulted in an operating loss that necessitated some price-tweaking and other adjustments. Then the marketing began to hit its stride. More junkets were brought on board. Loyalty club sign-ups quadrupled. EBITDA ramped up nicely, totaling PHP824.7 million over May and June ($18.5 million) for a blended operating margin of 25.6%. For the three months ended 30th June, Solaire generated PHP3.9 billion in gaming revenue ($87.5 million). Total net revenues for the quarter exceeded PHP4.1 billion. 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 some of the city’s leading VIP rooms, a casino at the Grand Lapa Macau and a diversified portfolio of investments in property, financial services, tour and travel, casino cruises, a resort in the Philippines, a junket room in one of Seven Luck’s popular foreigners-only casinos in Seoul and the recent addition of a VIP operation at the new Solaire Resort & Casino in Manila. In the Macau junket sector, which accounts formuchof the heft of theportfolio, Jimei is believed to rank among the top five 31 Jack Lam Chairman Jimei Group operators by rolling chip turnover, and as a measure of his 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, 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 52-year- old 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, 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