Inside Asian Gaming

September 2014 inside asian gaming 17 concerts and live performances. The group’s media investments often directly bolster its gaming and tourism businesses. The 2009 movie “Poker King,” starring A-list Hong Kong actors Louis Koo and Lau Ching Wan, was produced to support Suncity’s efforts to develop poker’s following among baccarat-focused Chinese players. High rollers at Suncity’s Poker King Club at StarWorld now play for the biggest pots in the world. Meanwhile, the Suncity- owned e.travellers magazine and UO Macau — the leading Web site for Chinese visitors to Macau—aim to lure visitors to the city. Although many of Mr Chau’s non-gaming investments support Suncity’s core activities, others have larger standalone aspirations. Sun Entertainment Culture Ltd, established in 2011, produces and distributes TV and film productions and organizes live concerts and marketing events. The sharp-dressed Mr Chau embodies the Suncity high-roller lifestyle, often pictured at elite parties in Chinese-language tabloids. But he’s known to work harder than he plays, and his professional achievements are widely recognized. Last year, he was appointed to the Guangdong provincial committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. InearlyJanuary,InternationalEntertainmentCorporation,controlled byHong Kong’s Cheng family, whose patriarch, Cheng Yu Tung, is Asia’s fourth-richest man, agreed to pay HK$7.35 billion (US$950 million) for a 70% stake in Suncity Group. The deal is pending regulatory approval. Grant Govertsen, a managing partner at Union Gaming Group in Macau, compared the acquisition favorably with practices in Las Vegas. “[We] are seeing more and more Macau gaming-related entities embrace the concept of having publicly traded equity. We would argue that this should have a longer-term positive impact—at least with respect to the industry’s reputation— as having publicly traded equity requires an increased level of transparency and an increased level of oversight.” James Packer Executive Chairman Crown Resorts Co-Chairman Melco Crown Entertainment Unlike his famous father, James Packer’s net worth—estimated by Australia’s Business Review Weekly earlier this year at A$7.19 billion—ranks him as only the country’s third-richest person. In his desire to fix that he’s found ownership of the continent’s premier casino rather too limiting for his purposes. Indeed, Australia itself has proved too small for him. He’s unlike his father, too, in that he prefers gambling on casinos to gambling in them, and that’s paid massive dividends in Macau via his Melbourne-based Crown Resorts’ 33% stake in Melco Crown Entertainment. It’s been his best investment to date, the one that’s allowed him to comb the world for opportunities to make another big splash. There was talk earlier this year he would bid to take over the 2,995-room Cosmopolitan on the Las Vegas Strip, a market that’s burned him in the past but has never ceased to intrigue him. Maybe he was interested in the Cosmo, maybe he wasn’t. In May, the luxury resort, which for all its attractions has never turned a profit, went to private equity giants Blackstone Group for US$1.73 billion. Then last month he made his splash. Crown laid out $280 million for a majority stake in 34.5 vacant acres of prime Strip real estate just a mile or so to the north, the site once occupied by a venerable casino called the New Frontier. The land will serve as the foundation for a new resort development company combining the resources of Crown and US hedge fund giant Oaktree Capital Management and headed by Andrew Pascal, a former president and chief operating officer of Wynn Las Vegas. Israeli developer Elad paid $1.2 billion for the site seven years ago, only to see its plans for a $5 billion super-resort crash and burn in the Great Recession. Mr Packer lost around $1 billion in Las Vegas himself back then through a series of investments that unraveled in the global financial crisis, including two abortive Strip resorts. Needless to say, a lot has changed since then. Sin City is on the mend, major capital investment is pouring in, and Crown is a much bigger and stronger company now, thanks principally to Melco Crown. But credit must also go to the decision to plow several hundreds of millions back into Australia to expand the company’s Crown Melbourne, its flagship, and Crown Perth at a time when the national gaming market is struggling to overcome listless domestic demand. “As we have built Crown Resorts into a thriving international