Terry Lanni, one of the key architects of MGM MIRAGE’s move into the Macau casino market, has died at the age of 68, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Mr Lanni was diagnosed with cancer in October 2009 about one year after he stepped down as chairman and chief executive of then MGM MIRAGE, now MGM Resorts International.
Mr Lanni steered the company’s rapid growth over a 13-year period, from one casino (the MGM Grand Las Vegas) into a gaming conglomerate with 17 resorts in Nevada, Mississippi and Michigan and 50% partnerships in four other properties in Nevada, New Jersey, Illinois and crucially, Macau in China. The result in the latter case was the creation of the MGM Grand Macau casino resort (now MGM Macau). It opened in December 2007 on Macau peninsula – the traditional heartland of the local casino industry – at a cost of US$1.25 billion.
In the former Portuguese territory the company’s JV partner was a shrewd choice – Pansy Ho, a daughter of Macau’s former gaming monopolist Dr Stanley Ho. The Ho family’s market insight and good political connections yielded for MGM not only a gaming sub-concession licence from Dr Ho’s operating company SJM but also the land for the project. It was all for the bargain price of US$200 million (Melco Crown Entertainment’s Macau sub-licence from Steve Wynn cost US$900 milllion and didn’t come with any land). The Ho family connection also assisted Las Vegas-based MGM in making the cultural adjustment needed to manage Chinese gaming operations. The choice of partner was however also on occasion a controversial one as far as one US state – New Jersey – was concerned. But as a calculated risk, the tie-up undoubtedly paid off. After Mr Lanni’s time the New Jersey JV with Boyd Gaming was sacrificed for the sake of the future story in a buoyant Macau market. Mr Lanni’s leadership on the Macau JV also set up the conditions that enabled his successor Jim Murren to launch a successful US$1.5 billion initial public offering for the flotation of the local operating unit MGM China on the Hong Kong stock exchange in May this year.
Mr Lanni succeeded in pulling off a a difficult double – creating business success while remaining personally popular in the industry.
“There is virtually no one that I’ve respected more than Terry Lanni,” said MGM Resorts’ founder and largest shareholder, Kirk Kerkorian, quoted in the Review-Journal. “His integrity, professionalism and generosity were second to none. He was a valued and trusted friend and an invaluable colleague.”
The bosses of the two other Las Vegas casino companies with operations in Macau also joined the many tributes to Mr Lanni.
Las Vegas Sands Corp Chairman Sheldon Adelson said Mr Lanni was one of gaming’s “most important and respected” leaders. “I greatly admired his commitment to the industry and the care he showed for his extended MGM family,” Mr Adelson said.
Wynn Resorts Ltd Chairman Steve Wynn called Mr Lanni a longtime business colleague, a friend, and a “lovely man, taken from us far too soon.”
