So now we know why Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s share price tanked in the final months of 2008.
It had nothing to do with a highly indebted company being caught in the headlights of the biggest global financial crisis in 80 years. It was in fact the fault of the management in place at that time, the top boss Sheldon Adelson said—without naming any individuals—in a television interview broadcast this week.
Mr Adelson, Chairman and Chief Executive of LVS made the claim in a recorded one-on-one talk with a BBC reporter in Singapore, broadcast on BBC World this week.
“Our stock kept going down, based upon what our people did—you know, the former management—and that caused the stock to go down, so now I’ve got to get it back up again. And the only way to do that is to finish the projects we’ve started and it’ll go back up again,” said Mr Adelson.
Asked if money was still a concern for the company, Mr Adelson had an upbeat reply.
“I want to change a word. Not ‘concern’, ‘opportunity’. How so? If I’m going to sell… if the company’s going to sell shares, why should I not take my own family money and take advantage of that opportunity and buy the shares?
“You’re looking at it the other way, that I couldn’t sell it to somebody else so I had to buy the shares myself—to the contrary. I want to back that up by telling you that about three months ago, when our stock was three [US dollars] I took money out of my children’s trust fund and I bought almost US$40 million more of shares in the open market. Is that some sort of necessity? It wasn’t a necessity and it wasn’t out of concern, it was out of opportunity.”
