The float comes after a tumultuous few months for casino operator SJM in which its stock market debut was both postponed and downgraded. Market volatility, increased competition from US casino operators Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts, and legal action brought by Ho’s estranged sister challenging the validity of the offer all contributed to delays and were also influential in derailing earlier forecasts that the IPO would raise US$1bn. Instead, this series of unfortunate events saw JSM settle for less than half of that, raising only US$494m.

And while SJM shares traded at HK$3.04 — just below its IPO price of HK$3.08 –
the recent liberalisation of Macau’s US$15bn gaming market and the Chinese Government’s attempts to restrict the numbers of Mainland Chinese tourists visiting Macau are likely to keep SJM shares around the HK$3.00 mark in the months ahead.

• Stanley Ho a winner IPO goes ahead
• Winnie Ho Will Not Give Up Her Fight
• Feud between gaming tycoon Stanley Ho and sister heats up
• Stanley Ho to Push For SJM IPO Again
• Dr Stanley Ho Sold US$130 Million Melco Shares

His siter Winnie Ho has waged a legal campaign, launching no fewer than 30 lawsuits against her brother since 2001 to reclaim ownership of a 7.3% stake in the holding company. She moved last week to seek judicial review to overturn a regulatory decision early this month to allow the IPO to go ahead.

Full story :: The Battle For Stanley Ho’s IPO is Still On

• Winnie Ho Wins First Round
• Feud between gaming tycoon Stanley Ho and sister heats up
• Another Stanley Ho And Wnnie Ho Round
• Stanley Ho a winner IPO goes ahead
• Stanley Ho and Genting Deal is Off

Deutsche Bank is managing the IPO. And of the shares on offer, 85 percent will be sold to institutional investors, 5 percent to employees and 10 percent to the public.

‘Fund managers said they are interested in the deal as SJM is a dominant player in [the] Macau gaming industry, but they are concerned how the company will deal with potential lawsuits from Winnie Ho, Stanley Ho’s sister.

The company plans to price the IPO before the Lunar New Year, which begins on Feb 7 this year.

• Galaxy Entertainment Has Sold 20% of It’s Business to Permira
• Melco sells shares to fund JV’s property purchase
• Dr Stanley Ho Sold US$130 Million Melco Shares
• Macau Property Opps Fund Plans AIM Listing On June 5
• Melco Gets Approval For NASDAQ Listing

Obviously, he needs the cash to fund his long awaited Oceanus project and spruce up his aging casino empire which are long overdue for refurbishment in the now fiercely competitive Macau casino market.

Reports from Hong Kong Thursday indicate that the company is to seek exchange approval for a Hong Kong IPO to raise at least US$1 billion (HK$7.8 billion), for Macau expansion plans. The company announced IPO intentions in early 2006, and has appointed Deutsche Bank to sponsor a listing it hopes will take place in January, sources said.

Last year, Macau overtook the Las Vegas Strip as the world’s largest gaming market, and SJM is betting on a gaming market where gross revenue could grow by more than 23 percent a year through 2010, according to a Credit Suisse report.

“Stanley Ho’s got a lot of long-term connections with the VIPs,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Rob Hart, referring to big-spending high-rollers who have been key contributors to Macau’s gaming boom. “He also has a lot of land, which has a lot of long- term potential given Macau’s small size.”

Macau is the only place in China where casino gaming is legal, and Ho is still the main operator despite the admission of other companies. “Their market share is standing at 37 percent, with Las Vegas Sands at 24 percent, and that’s even after the Venetian opening, so they still are the biggest player out there,” said Hart.

Reuters reports that BNP Paribas and CLSA will co-lead the SJM offering, with another presently unidentified bank possibly joining the underwriting group.

• Melco PBL raising funds for City Of Dreams project.
• Stanley Ho a winner IPO goes ahead
• Melco Gets Approval For NASDAQ Listing
• Dr Stanley Ho Sold US$130 Million Melco Shares
• Dr Stanley Ho’s to Start Marketing SJM Listing in Hong Kong

The founder of the Moon Valley Foundation sues STDM again, this time over the transfer of ownership of its bank.

She argued that as more than 70% of the identity of the shareholders have not been verified since the shareholders’ register had been lost in 1993, and therefore should not proceed with any major decisions or transfer of important assets.

The deal to sell off Seng Heng Bank (????) to ICBC in China could be linked to the legitimacy of the transaction, and the ICBC’s legal involvement in the future.

Representing lawyer Albert Ho (???) said in a press conference that his client had also sent letters to ICBC and watchdogs in mainland China and Macau, appealing for attention.

A lawsuit has also been filed at the Courts in Macau regarding the concern.

Source: www.blogmacau.info

• Stanley Ho denies links to Hong Kong Lawyer Beating
• Stanley Ho To Sell Seng Heng Bank to ICBC
• Winnie Ho “does not oppose” SJM to float in HK
• Five Arrested In Ho Beating
• Ao Macau’s Crooked Former Government Official Gets 27 Years Jail Term

The prohibitionist cult in America that has wreaked havoc on foreign gambling companies recently turned its guns on one of America’s own – casino behemoth MGM Mirage, the second largest gambling company in the world.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which was snuck onto an unrelated port security bill in the dead of night by conservative former Senate majority leader Bill Frist last September, has yet even to take effect – and it won’t until June of this year.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) nonetheless has expended considerable resources attacking foreign-based online gambling companies and their business affiliates through various older, mafia-oriented statutes covering wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering. This week’s developments notwithstanding, the aggressive approach comes with a veneer of national security concern laminated to it, and has generally been received with derision outside of the DOJ itself.

Much as the narco-traffickers of the recent past have been repackaged for the post- 9/11 media as narco-terrorists, in spite of the fact that their behaviors and business models remain identical to what they were before, the DOJ has tried, among other things, to tar the online gambling companies as vehicles for terrorist financing and money laundering.

Since the DOJ has spent most of its time and resources flailing around at publicly listed companies, which are subject to stringent – not to mention public - auditing procedures, and whose every wager is accounted for electronically, the accusations have largely rung hollow.

Although it’s true that traditional, cash-based casinos can be excellent laundering venues, the electronic transactions of the online companies are easier to track and far less susceptible to manipulation than the large cash transactions of a “bricks and mortar” casino. So why go online to launder money when you can clean it up the fun way, over a couple drinks with old fashioned cash?

In fact, the casinos of Macau, the hottest gambling jurisdiction on the planet right now, have long been used for just that, and a recently formed American evangelical anti-gambling group has made it its mission to utilize that shabby history to scuttle a massive joint venture between the MGM Mirage and its well connected Macanese partner.

Priests, pirates and prostitutes

Macau is popularly (http://familyfocuscoalition.org/pages.php?page=101) known as the land of priests, pirates and prostitutes. Russian prostitutes run out of Vladivostok by one time KGB agents turned gangsters are the preferred delicacy of the Macanese elite.

The history of casinos in Macau, however, is inextricably intertwined with a web of companies controlled by Stanley Ho, the richest man in Macau, and one of the richest in all of Asia. Hong Kong, where Ho resides, did not prohibit polygamy until 1971, and the spoils of that financial empire have been split among Ho, his three wives, and his seventeen children.

As recently as 2002, Ho-connected companies accounted for an astounding two-thirds of Macau’s GDP.

He was born into a once-wealthy Eurasian family in Hong Kong with deep roots in the opium trade, but fled almost penniless to neutral Macau in 1941 after the Japanese took control of Hong Kong. As legend has it, he made his first million by fighting off a pirate attack on the Pearl River delta while transporting contraband between Hong Kong and Macau, as a kind of reward for his heroic service.

He made his move in 1961. In a twist that would both launch his career and come to haunt him decades later, he and his business partners, which at the time included Yip Hon, an alleged triad leader and heroin trafficker, borrowed the seed money from his sister Winnie Ho to take control of Macau’s casino monopoly.

He controlled Macau’s casino concession for nearly 40 years thereafter.

According to a formerly confidential 309 page dossier (http://familyfocuscoalition.org/pages.php?page=1) on Ho prepared for an American state gambling commission - and recently published online by a new, anti-gambling American evangelical organization calling itself the Family Focus Coalition - Ho’s had quite a run.

This astonishing set of documents, which includes both confidential intelligence reports and news clippings, details decades worth of business dealings. Ho, who has never been charged with a crime, is accused of involvement in everything from laundering money (http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac?page=1&sy=nstore&kw=%22enter+the+dragon%22+&pb=all_ffx&dt=selectRange&dr=5years&so=relevance&sf=headline&rc=10&rm=200&sp=nrm&clsPage=1&docID=SMH050319395OT3N657G&cwv=true) to funding the North Korean nuclear project to good old-fashioned stock fraud (http://www.asianpacificpost.com/portal2/402881910674ebab010674f489e510ef.do.html).

Shunned in his attempts to extend his casino holdings to other jurisdictions like Canada and Australia, Ho invested $30m in 1999 to build the money-losing Casino Pyongyang, and his close relationship to Kim Jong Il even led him to act rather bizarrely as an intermediary in the run up to the Iraq War.

The Times of Indiareported (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/uncomp/articleshow?artid=39110877) at the time that Ho claimed that “high level North Korean officials have offered Saddam and his family 11th hour sanctuary in a mountain in North Korea.” Ho went on to say that Kim “told me that there really was a chance to revent a war and they said that Saddam Hussein could step down before the US and the British start to bomb Iraq and he could call democratic elections.” According to Ho, “one of the conditions of those elections would be that none of the candidates would be allowed funding from the US, ensuring that there would be no US interference in a future democratic Iraqi state. Anyone who did accept money from the US would be shot.”

According to Ho, the North Korean leader, in his unaccustomed role as peacemaker, offered Saddam’s family an entire mountain of their own. No dice.

Ho’s bank, the Seng Heng, has repeatedly been accused of acting as a major money laundering point for the North Korean government. In 2005, after considerable investigation by the American government for involvement in passing North Korean counterfeit money, as well as money laundering, it narrowly avoided being blacklisted from the international financial system by the Treasury Department under section 311 of the Patriot Act. Ho’s longstanding relations with North Korea date to his smuggling days (http://familyfocuscoalition.org/pages.php?page=97), when he circumvented the UN embargo to bring Chinese goods to North Korea during the Korean War.

VIP means all access

Legendary Macau gangster Broken Tooth Koi, now in prison, at one time leased (http://www.asianpacificpost.com/portal2/402881910674ebab010674f4ca74141f.do.html) a VIP room from the Hotel Lisboa, Ho’s flagship gambling enterprise. The VIP rooms created an entire subclass of the Hong Kong economy organized around travel junkets to the Macau casinos by Hong Kong gamblers, where they could be serviced by prostitutes and plied with drugs or whatever else they needed.

The structure of Ho’s casinos, in which VIP rooms (http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac?page=1&sy=nstore&kw=%22enter+the+dragon%22+&pb=all_ffx&dt=selectRange&dr=5years&so=relevance&sf=headline&rc=10&rm=200&sp=nrm&clsPage=1&docID=SMH050319395OT3N657G&cwv=true) were illicitly leased to local triads, provided an easy forum for prostitution, money laundering and loan sharking, and the house itself functioned as an unlicensed bank, extending credit to gangsters when needed.

Money changers (http://www.asianpacificpost.com/portal2/402881910674ebab010674f4ce50144f.do.html) across the border in Zhuhai provided ready access to a Chinese version of the Middle Eastern halawa system, in which Chinese Renminbi could be exchanged for casino chips or, if needed, a casino check payable to cash, without cash ever being transported across the border. Estimates of just how much money was laundered through these unregulated schemes have ranged (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/03/22/1111254024435.html) as high as $70bn per year, prompting concern on the Chinese side about the drain of hard currency.

Evangelize this

Unlike most businesses, the moral doubts surrounding the gambling industry lead its regulators to extend their investigations around the globe – MGM Mirage, for example, could lose its license in Nevada or New Jersey if regulators in those jurisdictions determine that the company had linked up with an “unsuitable” partner, whereever that might be.

The Rev. Gary Kellner, founder of the Family Focus Coalition, is counting on that to derail the joint venture between MGM Mirage and Ho-controlled SMTB, which is now officially run by his daughter, Pansy Ho. Kellner has been firing off letters and phone calls to gaming authorities in Nevada and New Jersey, hoping to put enough pressure on MGM Mirage to force it out of Macau. Although Pansy has a sketchy enough history (http://www.familyfocuscoalition.org/pages.php?page=234) of her own, she has admitted to borrowing much of her stake in the project from her father.

As Kellner put it to Matt Ward of the Las Vegas Business Press “We are giving Stanley Ho, who is in bed with a rogue terrorist nation of North Korea, which our own president says is a part of the ‘Axis of Evil,’ a license to print money, All I want to do is make sure the facts are known. That people who have the ability to investigate this have the facts and are asking the right questions.”

According to the Las Vegas Business Press, Pansy’s attorney John O’Reilly went ballistic when a reporter from the paper questioned him about the authenticity of the documents after a hearing by the Nevada Gaming Control Board on Pansy’s suitability.

“You lost that chance when you published that garbage without calling anybody,” he allegedly yelled at a reporter when asked for comment.

DOJ feeding frenzy chews up smaller fry

The DOJ has focused its prosecutorial zeal the last few months on listed online companies and their enablers, which in terms of overall wealth are still dwarfed by Ho’s Macau offerings.

Ho, who, along with business partner Ng Lap Seng, was at the center (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/stories/fifth060998.htm) of the Clinton-Gore Chinese fundraising scandal a few years back, has always managed skillfully to utilize his abundant political contacts to insulate himself from trouble. His legendary political connections in both Hong Kong and the mainland have made him untouchable – apparently even to the DOJ.

The closest anyone has gotten to Ho has been his own sister Winnie, who put up the original money for the concession back in 1961, and sued him in 2001 for squeezing her almost completely out of the family company. In a lawsuit (http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac?page=1&sy=nstore&kw=%22enter+the+dragon%22+&pb=all_ffx&dt=selectRange&dr=5years&so=relevance&sf=headline&rc=10&rm=200&sp=nrm&clsPage=1&docID=SMH050319395OT3N657G&cwv=true) that rocked Hong Kong, Winnie claimed that Stanley had blackmailed (https://www.feer.com/cgi-bin/auth/wwwauth.pl?link=http://www.feer.com/articles/2004/0406_24/p040money.html) her for years to conceal the fact that her son was actually the product of an illicit affair with their cousin, noted Hong Kong philanthropist Sir Eric Hotung.

Winnie managed the family casino business for years, and the lawsuit provided a rare view on the inner workings of Ho’s secretive family companies, supporting much of what had been only rumor or innuendo.

As if that weren’t enough, Winnie chose to intervene (http://www.lvbusinesspress.com/articles/2007/03/22/news/news_update/doc4603281601d1a963672308.txt) through a San Francisco attorney as a surprise witness against her brother at the March 22 Nevada Gaming Commision’s special hearing concerning the MGM-Ho deal, according to the Las Vegas Business Press. The spokesman apparently read a highly critical statement and introduced new documentary evidence into the public record, although at time of writing we still don’t know either the exact contents of the statement or the additional evidence introduced.

Egged on by the evangelicals, the New Jersey Republican party has also started to put political pressure (http://www.familyfocuscoalition.org/AGProbe.pdf) on the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to can the $1.1bn project.

If the Reverend Kellner has his way, MGM Mirage will be forced to eat crow on a deal in which it has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars. Whether the DOJ will hold Stanley Ho to the same standards as the online companies it has so eagerly eviscerated in the past year remains to be seen. ®

Burke Hansen, attorney at large, heads a San Francisco law office

Source | The Register UK

• U.S. Official: Macau bank probe ongoing
• Online Casinos in Macau
• Ho family influence in Macau gaming is not abating
• Pansy Ho Faces US Citizens Coalition Against Casinos
• Banco Delta Asia Fights USA Ban

The last round saw Madame Winnie Ho victorious, so obviously she believes she is riding high and is ready for the next punch! Apparently Dr.Stanley Ho, through STDM, which owns about 80% of SJM casinos, owns Winnie Ho a cool US$385 million, this is part the last 5-years dividends due to her as she is 8% shareholder in the Macau company.

As I like doing the numbers, let’s work out STDM |SJM profits for the past 5-years, well it’s about US$4.8 billion, or about US$1 billion per year. Now, you can see why everybody is falling heads over heels to join the game in Macau.

Anyway, back to the grand 82-year old Madame Winnie Ho, who has decided that after 30 or so lawsuits, that it is about time for her older brother Stanley, who just celebrated his 85th birthday, to come clean. She suggested that he should stop bullying and walking over her.

Her offer though is an incredible one and that is to buy out Stanley’s 25% stake in STDM. Why the heck she thinks he would sell that stake to her would be beyond me, but than again stranger things have happened in Macau. Even if he did, the price tag must be at least 5 x profits at US$1 billion per year, so she would be looking at least at US$1.25 billion to buy out his stake.

This ongoing saga surely must hurt Dr.Stanley Ho, as he has been unable to list STDM, as they planned raise US$1.9 billion through a share sale. These funds are badly needed as STDM needs to refurbish and upgrade their existing casinos.

To stay ahead of the increased competition in Macau, they also need to build new ones, with Babylon Casino opening later this month and the Grand Lisboa well underway due to open mid 2007.

More to follow…

• SJM to Develop Six More Macau Casinos, Including Cotai Strip
• Stanley Ho Hits IPO Roadblock
• Winnie Ho Wins First Round
• Dr Stanley Ho Sold US$130 Million Melco Shares
• Feud between gaming tycoon Stanley Ho and sister heats up

Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho Hung- sun sold HK$1.02 billion worth of Melco International Development (0200) shares Friday, paving the way to clear the regulatory hurdle for gaming company Sociedade de Jogos de Macau’s US$2 billion (HK$15.6 billion) listing in Hong Kong.

The legality of the share float, however, remains undetermined.

According to the term sheet, the 52.27 million shares placed represent 4.3 percent of the share capital.

Following the placement, Stanley Ho’s shareholding in Melco falls to 8.45 percent. The placement is underwritten by SBI E2-Capital. The shares were sold in a range of between HK$19 and HK$19.55 per share, a discount of between 10.6 percent and 8 percent to Friday’s closing price of HK$21.25. Melco shares have risen 28 percent since October. The deal is said to be priced at HK$19.55, sources close to the transaction said.

As SJM and Melco are two of the six licensed casino operators in Macau, Stanley Ho, who is controlling shareholder of SJM as well as a substantial shareholder in Melco, is required under listing rules to reduce his shareholding in Melco to avoid a conflict of interest between the two companies, a source said.

In March, Stanley Ho resigned as chairman of Melco and was succeeded by his son Lawrence Ho Yau-lung. Macau’s Court of Final Appeal ruled earlier that it needs to review the registry of Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau, or STDM, which owns 80 percent of SJM, to find out whether the Moon Valley Foundation was a shareholder of STDM as claimed by Stanley Ho’s estranged sister, Winnie Ho Yuen- ki. She personally owns 7.3 per cent of STDM, putting SJM’s listing plan into question.

At the same time, Melco also plans to spin off Melco PBL, a 50-50 joint venture with Australia’s Publishing and Broadcasting, to raise as much as US$1 billion through a Nasdaq float by year’s end.

Courtesy | The Standard

• Melco sells shares to fund JV’s property purchase
• Stanley Ho Hits IPO Roadblock
• Stanley Ho a winner IPO goes ahead
• Dr Stanley Ho’s to Start Marketing SJM Listing in Hong Kong
• Stanley Ho to Push For SJM IPO Again

Winnie Ho appealed to the Court of Final Appeal, who pointed out particularly that her situation is an “independent request” to STDM, because STDM requested the Court to contain in the new shareholders’ list contents that are different from Winnie Ho’s stance, and that Winnie Ho has the right to file a counter lawsuit as long as the requirements of the Civil Lawsuits Code are met.

The Court of Final Appeal also ruled that STDM should pay the cost of the consequent lawsuits.

Legal professionals predicted that it would take a very long time for the lawsuits between Stanley Ho’s STDM and Winnie Ho to proceed, and Winnie Ho has won in the first round.

Full story Winnie Wins First Round

• Stanley Ho a winner IPO goes ahead
• Feud between gaming tycoon Stanley Ho and sister heats up
• Another Stanley Ho And Wnnie Ho Round
• Winnie Ho “does not oppose” SJM to float in HK
• Winnie Ho Will Not Give Up Her Fight

Ho had said earlier the attack was likely related to his work as a lawyer on cases that might have offended the triads.

Ho, who currently represents such high-profile clients as Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho Hung-sun’s estranged sister Winnie Ho Yuen-ki, was attacked while enjoying a late- afternoon snack in a McDonald’s in Central on August 20.

Stanley Ho said in Beijing Friday he has happy about the new developments, praising the police for showing “their true colors” in making the arrests.

The one-minute-long attack happened in front of more than 100 witnesses, but the assailants were able to dash off unidentified because of caps that obscured their faces.

Ho had said earlier the attack was likely related to his work as a lawyer on cases that might have offended the triads.

Ho, who currently represents such high-profile clients as Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho Hung-sun’s estranged sister Winnie Ho Yuen-ki, was attacked while enjoying a late- afternoon snack in a McDonald’s in Central on August 20.

Stanley Ho said in Beijing Friday he has happy about the new developments, praising the police for showing “their true colors” in making the arrests.

The one-minute-long attack happened in front of more than 100 witnesses, but the assailants were able to dash off unidentified because of caps that obscured their faces.

Full story Five Arrests Relating Ho

• Stanley Ho denies links to Hong Kong Lawyer Beating
• Winnie Ho Wins First Round
• Winnie Ho “does not oppose” SJM to float in HK
• Stanley Ho Hits IPO Roadblock
• Winnie Ho Will Not Give Up Her Fight