Inside Asian Gaming
September 2015 inside asian gaming 49 able to negotiate with the central government on reforms to regulations concerning tax and international banking transactions to bring the country into line with international norms prevailing in other major gaming jurisdictions. A fluent Vietnamese speaker who’s been working and investing in the country for 19 years, he is credited with winning approval for the first foreign-owned school in Hanoi to acquire land for a purpose-built campus. At one time he ran a Vietnamese company that acquired a foreign- owned five-star hotel. He also helped found the country’s first privately owned airline. Challenged by a longstanding ban on domestic play and its distance from Ho Chi Minh City, about a two-hour drive under current conditions, The Grand has struggled to recoup its investment. For all that, though, it is a beautiful property, Vietnam’s first true destination casino, with 541 five-star hotel rooms and loads of inherent appeal. It fronts two kilometers of gorgeous beach on the South China Sea coast of Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, surrounded by protected forest land, and boasts a Greg Norman-designed golf course. The game changer for The Grand would be an end to the prohibition on domestic play, something Mr Pine and his team have been working to achieve. A move in that direction by the government seems nigh, though much speculation remains on where and in what form it would be permitted. Enrique Razon is looking to be in the thick of a dramatic expansion of resort-scale gaming in South Korea, and he’s turned to Michael Santangelo, the American who helped get Vietnam’s first integrated resort off the ground, to play a seminal role. The Philippine billionaire behind Manila super-resort Solaire has staked out territory in the two places where the Korean government’s nascent IR strategy is expected to coalesce. He’s secured agreements to purchase two small islands in the development core known as the Incheon Free Economic Zone, which lies about 30 miles west of Michael Santangelo Chief Operating Officer Jeju Sun Hotel & Casino Seoul and includes the country’s main international airport, and he’s picked up an active casino license on the island of Jeju, a popular visa-free destination for Chinese holiday-makers off the country’s south coast. Jeju, rich in natural beauty, is also home to the largest collection of casinos in South Korea—seven in all. Their combined revenues pale in comparison with the Seoul area. But the local government is focused on grabbing its share of the Chinese tourism pie. Genting Singapore is already there with plans for a multi-phased resort that could total US$1 billion when it’s fully built out. Analysts expect the island to grant up to two more licenses for integrated resorts. Mr Razon wants one of them. That’s where Mr Santangelo comes in. The Jeju license was acquired in March when Mr Razon’s new Solaire Korea unit bought T.H.E. Hotel and LVegas Casino, a 30-year- old property with around 200 rooms and a small, under-performing gaming floor. By June, it had been renamed the Jeju Sun, the casino was closed down for an overhaul, and Mr Santangelo was chief operating officer, charged with turning the place into a money-maker, and in doing so, to position Solaire Korea as a top contender for one of those IR licenses. As president, COO and CFO at The Grand Ho Tram Strip, Mr Santangelo had a $500 million showplace that was sparkling new when it opened on the South China Sea coast in the summer of 2013. But there was no precedent in the Vietnam market for anything on the scale of The Grand, and it was Mr Santangelo’s job to get it up and running from scratch—recruitment, marketing, IT, finance, security, daily operations—the works. So he’s well-seasoned for his new responsibilities. On Jeju he’ll have no domestic market to draw on, that’s against the law at all but one South Korea casino. It won’t make his job any easier. But then he didn’t in Vietnam either. No doubt, this figured prominently in Mr Razon’s decision to hire him. His five years’ experience at two multibillion-dollar resorts on the Las Vegas Strip is another plus. Prior to moving to Vietnam he handled the books at The Venetian as vice president of finance and controllers and later served at The Cosmopolitan in the same position.
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