Since 2002, Stanley Ho had the monopoly on gambling in Macau. His firm, the Sociedade de Jogos de Macau (SJM) is in trouble, because there are foreign rivals who want to transform Macau into Asia´s Las Vegas. The former Portuguese territory was even more successful than Las Vegas in 2006 and 2007. The most famous old casino of Mr. Ho is called the Lisboa and it´s associated with the past of gangster gunfights, although it´s less popular than the glitzy casinos operated by the US firms such as Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts and MGM Mirage.
Mr. doesn´t want to give up and so he plans to re-develop his Lisboa and other casinos in the territory. He will invest about $ 490 million he raised from a stock exchange listing in Hong Kong. He still has to talk about his plan to the investors, when SJM shares will begin trading.
The 87-year old Mr. Ho wants to claw back the market share lost to his competitors. He knows that he is old and that probably he won´t live long anymore, but still he wants to do everything for the changes. The problem is that there are already some controversies.
The company began trading, but Ho´s estranged sister Winnie questioned the legality of the share sale. The consequence was that some investors returned the shares they bought. Winnie Ho already filed about 30 lawsuits against her brother in recent years. The Chinese family empire has publicly 44 share holders of SJM´s parent company; including also Mr. Ho´s 3rd and 4th wife. Many of those members are active just in Macau´s gambling industry.
Some changes are going to happen and there will be different discipline in what each of them does. Mr. Ho who has a playboy life-style and his film starlet daughter Josie are mainstays of Hong Kong tabloids.
The SJM faces a number of challenges. In Macau about one of five people works in a casino.
Gabriel Chan, who is a gaming industry analyst in Hong Kong, said that with the 5 new casinos which shell open in 2009, about 20.000 workers will be needed. In Macau also a high-school dropout can get a job in a casino.
Macau has many tourists because of the casinos and the new visa rules could limit the number of mainland Chinese punters, who in 2007 made up half of Macau´s 27 million visitors. Since Mr Ho has the monopoly, many rules of the game have changed.
