Australia’s Echo Entertainment is joining forces with Hong Kong conglomerates Chow Tai Fook and Far East Consortium in a bid for a resort casino in the Queensland capital of Brisbane.
The combination beefs up Echo’s bid to keep rival Crown Resorts from dismantling its longstanding monopoly in Queensland’s largest city by narrowing the competition for a license there to three bidders. The third is Shanghai-based property conglomerate Greenland Holding.
The new group is known as Destination Brisbane Consortium, to which Echo will contribute 50% of the capital to develop the A$1 billion-plus resort. Echo also will operate the casino. Far East and Chow Tai Fook will each contribute 25% and will develop a luxury residential component included in the bid.
Queensland is in the throes of the largest gambling expansion in Australia’s history with the government deciding last year to open the state to three new licenses for integrated resorts, two of which have been tentatively awarded: one near Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef in the state’s northern tropics and one on the popular Pacific Ocean resort of Gold Coast, where Echo has held a monopoly for years.
The state is expected to award the Brisbane license in early 2015.
“Echo is delighted to work in partnership with two significant Asian-based partners and the government to develop and submit a proposal for the Queen’s Street Wharf site, which will deliver major investment in tourism infrastructure including a world-class integrated resort to Brisbane,” Chief Executive Matt Bekeir said.
Far East Consortium is an HKSE-listed developer with a portfolio of some 25 hotels around the world, including New York’s Trump Place. It has developed a number of Australian apartment towers since 1994 and has a senior management team in Melbourne, where it is currently building the A$1.2 billion Upper West Side complex.
Chow Tai Fook Enterprises is controlled by Hong Kong tycoon Cheng Yu Tung, whose family owns a large portfolio of property, hospitality and retail interests across the region. The company is a major shareholder in HKSE-listed New World Development, with a market capitalization of about US$10 billion, and HKSE-listed Chow Tai Fook Jewellry, the world’s largest jewelry retailer with a market cap of around US$14 billion. The family also holds a stake in Macau casino operator SJM Holdings.
In addition to its Brisbane casino, ASX-listed Echo owns the only currently operating casino in Gold Coast and The Star, its flagship, on Sydney’s Darling Harbour.
James Packer’s Crown challenged and eventually won the right to end Echo’s monopoly in New South Wales and is developing a competing gaming resort on Darling Harbour that is expected to open in 2019.
Crown owns two casinos in Australia, its flagship Crown Melbourne and Crown Perth in Western Australia. The company also holds a 33% stake in Macau casino operator Melco Crown Entertainment, which is expanding with major new resorts in Macau and in Manila, and is independently pursuing a resort casino license in Sri Lanka.
