Macau’s Billionaire’s Club

Written on September 22, 2006 by admin

We all know that it takes more than petty cash to play the lucrative casino market in Macau, the main criteria is that you need to be at least a billionaire and as proven we have five of those players playing the high rollers game in Macau!

Let’s start with the grand old daddy of Macau, Doctor Stanley Ho, according to the latest figures released by Forbes he is the world’s 84th richest man with a net worth of US$6.5 billion.

Despite his complaints about losing income to the high rollers, he still continues to increase his income as more players are attracted to come to Macau to gamble away all that they’ve got at one of his 15 casinos. And so thus along the way are nicely lining Stanley Ho’s pocket with some more cash! He now is redeveloping and extending the Hotel Lisboa to be the Grand Lisboa which has been billed to become Asia’s most luxurious Casino. As he has said before “We are Chinese and will not be disgraced,” Ho vowed at a company function, ‘We will not lose to the intruders.”

Next we have Mr. Lui Chi Woo, the world’s richest number 512, with which is still not a measly US$1.5 billion. We will for sure see his ranking, and his wealth, improve once his Galaxy Group’s five casinos starting to spin serious cash. His Galaxy StarWorld is primed for an opening on October 19, 2006. The Galaxy Grand Waldo, besides the Rio and Waldo Casinos is his only casino that currently brings him in some serious cash.

The foreign club is led by Sheldon Adelson who now is ranked 14th in the world with a net worth of US$20.5 billion. Like Stanley Ho and Lui Chi Woo he’s also a high school drop-out. Of course this did not deter him from hitting the jackpot with the listing of Las Vegas Sands where the company’s stock went up 61% in its first day of trading. Sheldon has been the most serious and the prime mover in Macau as shown by his grand US$13 billion development of the Cotai Strip, where he currently is building the Venetian Macao. His greatest success has been in Macau where has been raking in serious cash through the Sands Macao Casino.

Following to Macau was Stephen Wynn who is number 365 on the world’s richest list with US$2.1 billion. He just opened Wynn Macau and is hoping for similar success as his rival Sheldon Adelson. Wynn Resorts have taken a more conservative approach, and are planning a casino on the Cotai Strip, they also were quick to sell a sub-license to James Packer for a handy US$800 million.

This brings us to the latest arrival with James Packer, who is No.114 with a handy US$5 billion. He has teamed up with Lawrence Ho, one of Stanley Ho’s sons, but it seems that their Nasdaq listing plans may have hit a snag with Melco being denied a approval by the Hong Kong authorities. Their joint venture Melco/PBL are building Crown Macau which is due to open in early 2007, despite the snag with Melco they have said that the City of Dreams project is still going ahead as planned. Beside these projects they have six Mocha Slot Clubs with mainly slot machines scattered around Macau.

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