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SJM has an “entrenched management” and is steeped in “dysfunction” trying to placate various interests, wrote Sanford C.
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At 55, she’s the youngest board director and came with no casino experience, leading many to presume that she’s allied with Pansy, said Lee of IGamix. In 2018, Daisy Ho, Pansy’s sister from Ho’s second wife, joined SJM as chairman. Angela Leong, Ho’s fourth and latest wife who’s seen as a competitor to Pansy, holds an 8 percent stake in the holding company that controls SJM, a possible future flash-point. Internal maneuvering is also a constant distraction. It was the last among Macao’s six operators to build a casino on the territory’s swanky Cotai strip and has had to delay the opening of that new project, the $5 billion Grand Lisboa Palace, to March next year from end-2020. SJM’s complex division of power - holdings are split between three branches of the family, including Pansy’s - has made it slower-moving than rivals and it’s steadily lost market share. The industry will try to relaunch in a slow reopening that may start with a “travel bubble” of tourists allowed to come from neighboring Hong Kong and China’s Guangdong province, said Glenn McCartney, a professor at the University of Macao’s Faculty of Business Administration. With the outbreak seemingly curbed in mainland China, Macao and Hong Kong, analysts are hoping that border and visa restrictions will be eased starting next month, followed by a summer recovery.īut with casinos now desperate to regain lost ground, competition will be fiercer than ever, and SJM had already been losing market share to more dynamic operators before the pandemic. Gaming revenue plummeted by a record 97 percent last month compared with the same period a year ago, and a recovery is unlikely as long as virus containment measures prevent Chinese travelers - the enclave’s lifeblood - from entering the territory. But Macao is now in the midst of a historic free-fall due to the pandemic, with basically empty casinos losing more than $1 million a day.
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With her father’s passing, Pansy Ho is now expected to consolidate control over a complicated network of business interests, which include 20 casinos under SJM’s umbrella, the Chinese arm of American casino operator MGM Resorts International, and even the ferry and helicopter routes that link Macao and Hong Kong. None of the other children or three surviving wives have publicly contested the agreement, though investors and analysts remain wary of internal tensions. This paves the way for Pansy.”Ī significant new alliance created last year gave Pansy Ho and her allies control over the family’s core casino franchise, SJM Holdings Ltd. “Now that he has gone, what we’ll ultimately see is one person leading a reincarnated Ho empire. “While Stanley was alive, things were in limbo - it would have been disrespectful for someone to take the helm,” said Ben Lee, Macao-based managing partner at gaming consultancy IGamiX. With the death of the trailblazer who catapulted Macao past Las Vegas to become the world’s gambling epicenter, the pressure is now on her to unite the interests behind the Ho family’s $15 billion fortune, rejuvenate an aging casino franchise and lead the empire through the coronavirus pandemic that’s caused gambling revenue to plunge by more than 90 percent.Īnd with a fractious family held in check only by a delicate balance of power, Ho will need to chart a careful path forward. Ho, a former socialite, is already chairman of one of Macao’s biggest conglomerates and co-chairman of casino operator MGM China Holdings Ltd., having become her father’s favored successor years ago.