Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | June 2010 10 its nearly completed Galaxy Macau IR to the west of the strip behindThe Venetian Macao. The crisis also caused Las Vegas Sands Corp (LVS) to suspend construction of its Cotai Five and Six plots on the eastern side of the Strip across the road from The Venetian Macao and the Four Seasons. In April, Galaxy announced it had the funding to start fitting out Galaxy Macau with the aim of opening in the first half of 2011. In late May this year, LVS announced it had completed a US$1.75 billion syndicated loan deal to allow it to recommence work on Cotai Five and Six. That cash complements the US$2.5 billion LVS raised from a listing of its local unit, Sands China, on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in November 2009. LVS said in a filing to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in May that the first phase of Cotai Five and Six would be completed by the end of the third quarter 2011. Doubts still remain, however, over the completion date for the whole project. It’s not clear whether Sands China will be able to recruit enough of the 10,500 workers it will need as quickly as it will need them, because of possible restrictions on migrant labour caused by the Macau government’s desire to placate a small but vocal group of the local long-term unemployed. T he term ‘Cotai Five and Six’ to describe LVS’s Cotai extension is convenient shorthand for writers and analysts. But it’s somewhat misleading, making the project sound like the equivalent of a granny apartment built onto the family home, rather than what it actually is—a truly gigantic project costing almost twice as much as The Venetian Macao. When finished, it will have more than 6,000 hotel rooms—twice as many as The Venetian Macao—shared between four major brands: Sheraton, St Regis, Traders and Shangri-La. In its first quarter 2010 results filing to SEC, LVS also said it had been given a two-year extension to complete the Macau Ownership Taxonomy as of August 2009—courtesy of Union Gaming Research Parcels Five and Six Cover Story