Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming August 2015 24 Cover Story 8,000 permanent positions. Plus, Echo promised to relocate its headquarters from Sydney to Brisbane if it was selected, a move expected to happen before the IR’s 2022 opening. COMPLEMENTARY OFFERINGS The Campbell government reportedly urged the Queen’s Wharf finalists to merge, leading Crown to ally with Greenland and Echo to join with Chow Tai Fook and Far East Consortium, which had submitted a joint proposal. The Destination Brisbane team complements Echo’s experience in Australia with reach into the China market, Australia’s number two source of visitors behind neighboring New Zealand. Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook’s billionaire founder Cheng Yu- tung is a longtime investor in Macau gaming, owning a 10% stake in SJM Holdings parent company STDM since the 1980s. “I have no doubt that Chow Tai Fook group has very good relationships with the leading junket and VIP operators in Macau,” Pacific Financial Services founder Tony Tong, whose Hong Kong firm provides financial advice to the VIP sector, says. Chow Tai Fook’s jewelry arm Waiting Game The status of Queensland’s two proposed integrated resorts beyond Brisbane hasn’t gotten any clearer in recent months, but both situations keep getting more interesting. In May last year, Queensland granted preliminary approval to ASF Consortium’s A$7.5 billion ($5.5 billion) Gold Coast cruise terminal IR project and Hong Kong billionaire Tony Fung’s A$8.15 billion Aquis at Great Barrier Reef outside Cairns. Neither one is a sure bet at this point. Queensland’s Liberal National Premier Campbell Newman promoted expanding IRs to reinvigorate the economy and increase revenue for the heavily indebted state government. His party was upset in January voting and replaced by a Labor government under Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, thought to be less enthusiastic about IRs, especially after it suspended the ASF project in February. State officials have warned license competitions could be reopened unless there’s progress. GamePlan Consulting founder Sudhir Kale thinksMs Palaszczuk’s victory actually makes further IR development more, not less, likely. “Her government won the elections on the platform of ‘no assets sales’ [to reduce debt] and therefore will require new investment and new tax revenues far more desperately than the earlier government did,” Mr Kale, a Queensland resident, says. “I believe the stance of the new government will be to have the two companies invest in Queensland and then duke it out with regard to competition for customers from mainland China.” The Gold Coast cruise ship IR includes ASF Group, an Australia- listed vehicle for Chinese investment in Australia, with Chinese state-owned companies China State Construction Engineering and CCCC Guangzhou Dredging. In response to corruption concerns, ASF appointed an outside casino operator, Global Gaming Asset Management, led by former Las Vegas Sands President and Chief Operating Officer William Weidner, with other Macau-tested, senior LVS alumni in key roles. But ASF has seen two IR sites rejected amid local opposition and environmental issues, the second one prompting the suspension. In late May, the consortium announced it planned to have talks with the government “over the next few weeks” to try to find a new site and revive the project. Mr Fung’s audacious Aquis, potentially the largest tourism project in Australian history, has won federal environmental approval but has other issues. In February 2014, Mr Fung announced plans to buy casinos in Canberra and Cairns. The $6 million deal for Casino Canberra, which has 20 tables and no machines, won approval, and Mr Fung says he plans to list it under the Aquis brand name. But Queensland state probity investigations required for a gaming license derailed the purchase of Reef Casino in Cairns after Mr Fung imposed a late-November deadline. The regulator said The new casino will have a maximum of 2,500 gaming machines along with hundreds of tables. Gaming tax will be 10% for VIP play, 20% for mass tables and 30% for machines.