Singapore Board: Marina Bay Sands Can’t Sell Mall Until 2017
By Sam Holmes and Chun Han Wong
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
SINGAPORE (Dow Jones)–The government-run Singapore Tourism Board said Thursday that casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS) isn’t allowed to sell its shopping mall at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands casino resort until after March 2017.
The board’s comments came after a senior Las Vegas Sands executive said the group’s Singapore unit, Marina Bay Sands Pte. Ltd., has plans to sell the mall located within the resort in two to three years.
“Marina Bay Sands Pte. Ltd., the successful bidder of the Marina IR, is not allowed to sell, transfer or dispose of its estate interest in Marina Bay Sands within the exclusivity period of 10 years,” STB’s director of integrated resorts and business tourism development, Carrie Kwik, said in a statement.
“The approval of the Singapore government must be sought if the IR operator were to consider any sale or subdivision of the IR after that period.”
Las Vegas Sands Chief Operating Officer Mike Leven said in an interview with a gaming news website late last month that the casino operator could make as much as US$4 billion from a sale of the 800,000 square-foot shopping mall at its Marina Bay Sands integrated resort.
“We should do that very easily (receive returns on our investment in Marina Bay Sands within four to five years of its opening) without even having to sell an asset like our mall, which we expect to sell in maybe 2013 or 2014, which can provide as much as US$4 billion back on our US$6 billion investment just on our mall alone,” Leven had said in a video interview on the Inside Asian Gaming website.
When contacted Thursday, a Marina Bay Sands spokesman confirmed that Leven’s statements were “inadvertently made without reference to certain restrictions set out in the development agreement between Marina Bay Sands Pte. Ltd. and the Singapore Tourism Board.”
Marina Bay Sands, which opened its casino in April last year, recorded a revenue of US$584.9 million and operating profit of US$196.7 million in the first quarter. The resort reported a revenue of US$560.4 million in the fourth quarter in 2010, and US$485.9 million in the third quarter.
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