CLAIMS TO FAME
- Controls long-time Philippines market leader Solaire
- Building new casino resorts in Quezon City and Cavite
There are two kinds of gambling mogul in the Power 50: the one that is a gambling specialist, and the one for whom gambling is part of a much larger empire.
Enrique Razon Jr is a vivid example of the latter. A billionaire many times over and one of the Philippines’ wealthiest men, his interests straddle global port management, domestic power and water supply and other utilities, philanthropic and sporting initiatives, and – somewhere among all of it – the Philippines’ classiest land-based casino precinct. There’s a reason Solaire won this year’s IAG Academy IR Award for the best integrated resort in the Asia-Pacific region outside of the behemoth Macau and Singapore properties.
Razon’s involvement in gambling operations is difficult to describe. He almost always lets his business returns and trusted deputies do the talking. In the case of Bloomberry Resorts Corp and its Solaire integrated resort in Entertainment City, that deputy is CEO Thomas Arasi, who is also in the Power 50.
But Razon’s quiet, stable approach does not amount to distancing himself from day-to-day tribulations, as shown by the firing of Global Gaming Asset Management as managers of Solaire early in its corporate life, and Razon’s personal touch in the development of various luxury offerings around Solaire.
On the contrary, Razon’s method has been a refreshing change for the industry compared with the punchy, at times overwhelming cage fight that American executive life offers, or compared with the faction-ridden, politically yoked environment that can beset established Chinese interests.
One of the reasons Bloomberry’s operations impress those who look a little closer is that it is a Philippine enterprise with an authentically continental outlook.
While three of Macau’s six operators have prevaricated and lost their nerve over expansion in Asia, Razon made serious attempts to make footprints in South Korea and Japan on the back of land and property ambitions.
The fact he was largely defeated by the structural hostility of those markets was, to put it brutally, an indictment of the markets, and not him or his people.
And it won’t soon be forgotten that it was Bloomberry and Lawrence Ho’s Melco Resorts that made the most nuanced and elegant approaches to the Japanese market, for example. Appearing at the now defunct Japan Gaming Congress in Tokyo in 2014, the impression left by the tag team of Razon and a Japanese-speaking Arasi was only matched by Ho’s understanding of Japanese media and his long association with Japan through his father, Stanley Ho.
MGM scored the difficult bounty of an Osaka deal, but one litmus test for the success of the Japanese integrated resort experiment was its ability to retain the interest of an ambitious, literate and highly connected mid-tier operator out of the Philippines. This, sadly, it failed to do.
Under Razon, Bloomberry has projected a positive, optimism-laden Philippine corporate culture that brings credit to a country and a vast population beset by suffocating corruption, poverty and violence. It offers a tactile glimpse of what can be for a nation that deserves more: revenue generation and growth, an inclusive, loyal and globalist philosophy, and the ability to weather shocking nationwide disruptions.
Expanding with a new casino in Quezon City next year and a boutique casino in Cavite a few years down the road, Bloomberry’s future in the Philippines and the region is arguably a bellwether for the land-based industry in Asia. With Razon at the helm and his empire as guarantor, the future can’t come soon enough.
For the full list of 2023 Asian Gaming Power 50 winners, click here.
