Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming September 2015 24 The collapse of the Macau casino bubble has cost Angela Leong around US$1 billion of her net worth, as calculated by Forbes , and sent her tumbling 511 places on the magazine’s 2015 list of the world’s wealthiest. She’s still good for around $1.3 billion, though, so no worries the 54-year-old Guangzhou native, a former dance instructor and the fourth and youngest of casino tycoon Stanley Ho’s consorts and mother of five of his 17 children, will be lining up for public assistance any time soon. And she remains one of the most powerful individuals in Macau gaming. She owns the largest individual stake in SJM Holdings, the Hong Kong-listed parent of the casino giant Mr Ho founded, and 10% of SJM’s operating subsidiary, Sociedade de Jogos de Macau. She also controls one of the largest personal equity stakes in STDM, the Hong Kong company that ran the Ho casinos as a monopoly for 40 years before the market was opened to competition in 2002. STDM’s portfolio includes interests spanning the Pearl River Delta in banking, property development, retail, transportation and infrastructure, and as SJM’s biggest investor, in gaming still. Her holdings extend to an interest in L’Arc Macau, a 56-story casino hotel that includes private residences, retail shops and a 10,000-square-meter gaming floor that operates as one of 15 independent sub-licensees of SJM. She also serves as vice chair of the Macau Jockey Club. But it is in SJM’s efforts to realign its business away from the VIP focus that has left it the most battered of the six casino concessions that Ms Leong’s impact will be most clearly felt. She controls Casino Jai Alai, which the company is leasing from her in order to remodel it at a cost of HK$655 million and gain a stock of badly need mass-market gaming tables and hotel rooms. Located just outside the Macau Ferry Terminal and slated for completion next year, the property also will include a collection of shopping, dining and cultural attractions for boosting the company’s tourist profile. More important is the influence she wields on the long-term success of Lisboa Palace, the HK$30 billion (US$3.8 billion) Cotai resort on which SJM’s future depends. She was a driving force behind a joint venture with Versace that secured for the project one of its most distinctive elements, a HK$2.5 billion, 270-room hotel the famed fashion house is helping to design and one of only three hotels in the world to carry its brand name. She also owns a sizable parcel of land adjoining the under- construction resort for which the company has been negotiating for at least two years in hopes of expanding Lisboa Palace’s Angela Leong Executive Director SJM Holdings Managing Director Sociedade de Jogos de Macau footprint. As it stands the 70,500 square meters allotted the project is the smallest the local government has granted to the six gaming concessions on Cotai. Ms Leong’s plot measures 200,000 square meters held by a company called Macau Theme Park and Resort which she controls. Ms Leong has expressed a desire to see a family-style amusement park at the site, something along the lines of what China resort operator Chimelong is developing on neighboring Hengqin Island. She has talked at various times of an indoor beach and wave pool, thrill rides, an equestrian center, MICE facilities and several budget hotels. Nothing has come of it so far, and it’s been reported that almost half the parcel is still in bureaucratic limbo and doesn’t actually belong to Macau Theme Park, not yet anyway. What is certain is that Ms Leong will continue to play a substantial role in shaping the future of gaming in Macau. She is a member of the Macau Legislative Assembly representing the New Union for Macau’s Development, a pro-business, pro- Beijing coalition chaired by SJM Chief Executive Ambrose So. She is a member of the elite committee that elects the Macau chief executive. She also holds seats on the Jiangxi Provincial and Zhuhai Municipal committees of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.