Las Vegas Sands will restart a stalled resort in Macau even though its US$2.5 billion initial public offering (IPO) raised less than expected, a source familiar with the deal said yesterday.
The sale had been expected to raise as much as US$3.4 billion, with some proceeds earmarked to restart construction on the resort after the global economic crisis dented Macau’s gaming sector last year.
The shares will begin trading in Hong Kong next Monday at a price of HK$10.38 (US$1.35), said the source, who did not want to be identified.
“The sale was at the lower end of the range,” he said. “But it won’t affect construction or paying down debt — they will still go ahead with that.”
Some of the IPO proceeds and a US$1.75 billion bank loan would be used to pay construction costs, company executives said last week.
About 11,000 construction jobs were lost when the project halted last November, dealing a blow to the former Portuguese colony.
Macau, which was handed back to China in 1999, is the only place in China where casino gambling is allowed. It has now overtaken Las Vegas in terms of gaming revenue after opening the gaming sector to foreign competition in 2002.
Las Vegas Sands operates the Venetian, Sands and Four Seasons casino hotels in Macau.
The company announced its listing plan after rival Wynn Macau launched an IPO in Hong Kong on Oct. 9, as overseas casino operators seek to capitalize on a rebound in sentiment towards Macau’s gaming sector.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day