Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2011 40 Asian Gaming 50 – 2011 lose. And VIP business in Macau’s casinos is strongly based on personal relationships. Like a healthily-functioning marriage, those relationships with the players, and also the junket investors, junket consolidators, agents and sub-agents that bring in the high rollers from mainland China and beyond, need to be nurtured and affirmed on a virtually daily basis. Mr Hunterton quickly proved he had the necessary people skills and managerial experience to fit into GEG’s corporate culture and to keep the marriage between StarWorld and its players and junkets a happy one. If you speak to executives from the junkets, they consistently single out GEG for praise in terms of its support and fairness toward the junket trade. Not all the Macau operators have been as consistent in their approach to managing their relationships with the junkets as Mr Hunterton, his colleagues and his employers. The contented state of that marriage showed in StarWorld’s results. In 1Q 2010, the first full quarter of Mr Hunterton’s tenure, property EBITDA increased 81% compared to 1Q 2009, to HK$369 million. There was an all-time record for VIP rolling chip volume of HK$102 billion, up 86% year-on-year compared to 1Q 2009. On an annualised basis, the return on investment for the property—which cost a modest (by current Cotai standards) HK$3.3billion (US$430 million) when it launched in October 2006—was 35%. In 1Q 2011, StarWorld’s EBITDA reached HK$664 million, up 80% year-on-year—the 11th consecutive quarter of EBITDA growth. ROI was 69% during the quarter, calculated by total EBITDA for the previous 12 months divided by total investment including land cost. In 2Q this year, Mr Hunterton presided over a 12th consecutive quarter of EBITDA growth. Mr Hunterton is a 14-year veteran of the gaming industry in Las Vegas and Macau. Prior to joining GEG he spent three years in senior operational and business development leadership roles with MGM Grand Macau. After graduating from Yale University in the United States with a degree in economics, Mr Hunterton began his gaming career as a dealer at the Treasure Island Resort in Las Vegas. He quickly advanced to the position of director of slot operations at the neighbouring Mirage Hotel Casino and then progressed to a national marketing director role at the Bellagio Hotel Casino. 24 (31) Yasushi Shigeta President and CEO Angel Group In March this year, Yasushi Shigeta faced a test of his leadership. Japan’s Angel Group—Asia’s largest supplier of casino playing cards—wasn’t directly affected by the massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that hit the country. But Mr Shigeta did have to tackle the international perception that somehow industry in the whole of Japan had ground to a halt. That misleading impression was, if anything, reinforced when it was publicised that power rationing had been introduced in some parts of the country. Fortunately, Mr Shigeta and his management team were able to move into action quickly. They reassured their many casino customers around the world, and in the high volume Asian region in particular, that the company was very much still in business and running smoothly. Those reassurances were timely. To give an idea of the high intensity of playing card usage in a baccarat- dominated market such as Macau, a casino operator with major properties in both Macau and Las Vegas said that its Macau casino goes through about as many decks in a month as its Vegas casino uses in an entire year. The experience of the earthquake and accompanying disasters was a reminder of the importance of contingency plans for all businesses in Japan—a country that is in an unsettled neighbourhood, geologically speaking. “We have a strict policy of risk management. But we would also like to express our many thanks to everyone for the outpouring of concern and encouragement regarding the disaster. ANGEL will continue to strive to meet our customers’expectations,”Mr Shigeta told Inside Asian Gaming shortly after the traumatic events. ANGEL as a company is 60 years old. For 50 of those years, it has been making card-related products, including novelty and collectors’ items as well as professional casino cards. The firm says it has a three-pronged approach to its business: to deliver quality, good service and —in the case of casino products—security. Under Mr Shigeta’s stewardship, Angel Group has maintained and built on its precious reputation for quality control in the manufacturing of its gaming products. Angel Playing Cards are acknowledged in the Asian gaming industry for having the lowest failure rate of any product in that category. Angel is dominant in the key Asian jurisdiction of Macau, where the company is estimated to have 90% of the market. One Macau operator reports that Angel’s pre-shuffled product has an error free record of over 99.9%. That reliability has translated into sales. Regionally, ANGEL says it has an 80% share of the Asian and Australian casino market and has risen to become the biggest supplier of playing cards for casinos in the world. Mr Shigeta’s professional background in management consultancy—he entered the sector after graduatingwith a degree in Information Science from Kyoto University in 1990—probably helped him keep an overview on quality-related issues when he joined Angel three years later. He worked his way up from middle management to become a director of Angel Group in 1995, finally being appointed to the top job in 2005.