Melco Gets Approval For NASDAQ Listing

Written on November 1, 2006 by admin

Courtesy — Bloomberg — Australia’s richest man James Packer and billionaire ’s son won approval from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to list their casino venture on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Shares of ’s Melco International Development Ltd. surged.

The planned listing needs to be approved by Melco shareholders, the company said in a statement issued yesterday. Packer, speaking in Sydney today, confirmed the casino venture between his Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd. and Melco received approval for the listing.

Packer and are vying with Wynn Resorts Ltd., Las Vegas Sands Corp. and for a share of the gaming industry in . Casino companies have been investing in the former Portuguese colony since its return to China in 1999, betting Chinese gamblers will flock to the only place in the country where casino gambling is legal.

The listing may give Melco “a wider investor base and more stringent corporate disclosure,” Karen Tang, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG in Hong Kong, wrote in a research note today.

Melco PBL plans to sell $1 billion of shares in an initial public offering of their venture, people familiar with the transaction have said. The venture plans to open its first casino in in April, and a second one in 2008.

Neither Packer nor the Melco statement provided more details on the plan to sell shares on Nasdaq.

Shares Jump

Shares of Melco jumped by 7.3 percent, the biggest gain in more than four months, to close at HK$19.18 in Hong Kong. PBL’s stock rose 2.2 percent to A$19.95 in Sydney.

Maggie Ma, a spokeswoman for Melco in Hong Kong, declined to comment. Melco shareholders will vote on the listing proposal at an extraordinary general meeting, the company said.

The exchange’s listing committee last month rejected the venture’s application to sell shares on Nasdaq, said in a statement Sept. 12. Last night’s statement did not say why the committee reversed its decision.

gaming stocks started surging in 2004, when Las Vegas Sands Corp. opened the first foreign-owned casino in the city, the only place in China where casinos are legal. Investors are betting on gaming revenue growth driven by rising incomes and easing of travel restrictions for China’s 1.3 billion population.

The government in 2002 ended ’s four decade-monopoly of the gaming industry in by issuing five more casino licenses.

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Posted in City of Dreams, Crown Macau, Macau Business, Macau Casino, Macau Gaming, Melco Crown

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