Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING MAR 2019 20 COVER STORY time they do something to invigorate their brand and they were looking more into the Asian market. At the same time we were looking to the Japan market. The more we understood Japan, the more we felt Japanese and European culture are very similar, where they love sophisticated things, they love things that are well made, they love things to be so elegant. And that was why we felt that if we found a partner in Europe, that will enhance our chance of winning a precious license in Japan. MC: What about another partnership, the 4.9% stake in Wynn Resorts? FL: That was being opportunistic. When some of their shares were available, we took the opportunity to buy into a very well run gaming company. We took it as a passive investment. At the moment, this is a [very] early stage, so it’s a matter of getting to know the company better, to understand what they can do. MC: Does Galaxy need a US presence? FL: No. By market cap, we’re already the second biggest [gaming company] in the world, and we built that in a short 15 years. We feel that we already have a very stable and capable management team, and we feel very, very confident with the talent we have now, with the capability we have now both in execution capability and financially, we should be able to take on any opportunities. MC: How about a US stock market listing for Galaxy? FL: It’s not something that is in our mind at the moment. MC: What makes Galaxy the best choice for Japan? FL: We like to say that we’re bringing the best of Asia and the best of Europe into Japan. If we could also find a strong Japanese partner, we think we would be able to showcase to the Japanese government and the people of Japan that we would be able to bring the best of three worlds together. We feel confident about that. In addition, we are the biggest in Macau and with Japan wanting to bring a lot of Asian customers into Japan – they have a vision to bring up to 60 million visitors into Japan by the year 2030 – we think we can play a role there, too. MC: What will Macau look like after concession re- tendering? FL: Surely we’re moving in a direction where there will be more diversification. It is up to us to convince the government that we will be able to support that vision of making Macau a truly diversified city. We [want to support] what people in the community want, too, so partnerships with SMEs, for example, is important. Galaxy was the first gaming operator to actually reach out to SMEs and partner with them. When we bought Broadway Macau [in 2013], we already had a vision that we want to turn Broadway into a more local authentic position, to build a food street where we would be able to partner with local brands such that they would be able to expand their businesses, too. At the time most of the F&B brands in Macau were small, family brands. We had to reach out to them and do our part to make sure we offered them training, offered them better terms, financially supported them so they would feel comfortable to come in. It was not an easy task initially because there was a lot of skepticism. [They said,] you’re such a large company and you want to gobble us up. ‘No,’ I said, ‘no, we are not going to make money in partnership with you, but we want to bring you in here because you’re authentic and you represent truly what Macau stands for. Finally we succeeded and that really started the whole thing where the government was supporting it, too. We partnered with SMEs and now a lot of other people are doing the same thing, but we were the first. I feel in the future we probably need to be partnering and caring about the community more, like doing more CSR. Again, we were one of the earlier ones to be forming a volunteer group where we do services for the community. We formed this HK$1.3 billion foundation to