Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JUN 2020年6月 亞博匯 22 COVER STORY Tuesday 26 May 2020 saw the end of an era. At the age of 98, Dr Stanley Ho, the father of modern Macau, passed away at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital. T uesday 3 June 2009 represented an extraordinary moment of triumph for the Ho family. Stanley Ho received the Global Gaming Expo Asia (G2E Asia) Visionary Award from Macau’s then-Chief Executive Edmund Ho – no relation – who took office in 1999 pledging to topple the casino monopoly, granting new casino concessions to Las Vegas names. Nearly a decade after that pledge, Ho’s SJM Holdings held the biggest market share among Macau’s six operators, outdoing the likes of Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn. Cutting the ribbon to open Asia’s leading gaming trade show, Stanley Ho was flanked by official representatives of China, Britain, Australia and the US. The former two nations honored Ho, the latter two scorned him. Regulators in the US state of New Jersey had only two weeks earlier called Pansy Ho an “unsuitable” partner for MGM based on her association with her father. Yet, with the world watching, there she was, a 50%partner inMGMMacau, posing unabashedly for photos with her father. Son Lawrence Ho also featured in family portraits, the day after opening the US$2.1 billion City of Dreams, developed by the younger Ho’s Melco Resorts in partnership with James Packer-controlled Crown Resorts, across the street from The Venetian Macao in the fledgling Cotai casino district. While Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands suspended its Cotai projects and flirted with bankruptcy in the wake of the global recession, Melco Crown pressed ahead. Macau’s casino liberalization guru, Jorge Oliveira, said LVS didn’t