Macau gambling heir Lawrence Ho (何猷龍) is looking to expand his empire to Taiwan as it ends a decades-old ban on casinos — but not if it risks upsetting China.
In an interview with AFP, the 31-year-old son of Macau gaming tycoon Stanley Ho (何鴻燊) said he was enthused by the approval by Taiwan’s legislature on Monday of a bill allowing casinos to be built on its offshore islands.
“Subject to the credit market, we are very interested,” the chief executive officer of Melco Crown Entertainment said. “I have given a few speeches in Taiwan. We’ve looked at that market quite a bit extensively in the past few years.”
But he said that good cross-strait relations were crucial.
“Our relationship with China is key to us, we wouldn’t want to do something to piss them off,” he said in English, adding that Taiwan’s internal politics would also be a factor.
Ho said Japan was another big Asian market that interests him, but that he would ensure any expansion would not hurt his gaming business in Macau, which will remain his base.
Ho’s company, a NASDAQ-listed joint venture with Australian entertainment tycoon James Packer, is one of six concessionaires allowed to operate casinos in the southern Chinese city.
His competitors include US giants Wynn and Las Vegas Sands, Sociedade de Jogos de Macau (SJM) run by his father, and MGM Grand Macau, a joint venture between his elder sister Pansy and Vegas firm MGM Mirage.
Like his rivals, his six-star hotel Crown Macau was hit after Beijing last year tightened visa restrictions on mainland visitors to Macau, who constitute the bulk of their customers.
It resulted in a 10 percent drop in Macau’s gaming revenues for the third quarter last year, official statistics showed.
But Ho said he believed the city’s economy would rebound after hitting the bottom in the fourth quarter and China would relax its visa policies over the next few months.
“We are very bullish,” he added, speaking after announcing on Tuesday that his US$2.1 billion entertainment resort, City of Dreams, would open as planned in the second quarter of this year.
His company will recruit 7,000 people over the next few weeks.
“It is not the worst time in the world to open a new property,” he said. “We are the only large-scale construction that’s still opening in Macau. So we will have the best pick” of the labor.
The project, centered around a casino with 550 tables and 1,500 machines, is nearing completion on the Cotai Strip, where Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands has Venetian Macau and Four Seasons.
Ho said City of Dreams — which, apart from the casino, will count several hotels as well as restaurants, shops and a lavish entertainment venue — would complement its gambling-focused neighbor.
Ho — who says he never gambles — is often seen as Macau’s next “gambling king” after his father, who for four decades enjoyed a monopoly in Macau until the government liberalized the gaming sector in 2002.
“He’s very, very flashy ... I am pretty boring,” the younger Ho said. “I am very fortunate to be his son. He has so many roots here, just being his son has opened numerous doors.”
But he said he never wanted to work in his father’s companies, and what he learned was “away from his company.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said its materials management head, Vanessa Lee (李文如), had tendered her resignation for personal reasons. The personnel adjustment takes effect tomorrow, TSMC said in a statement. The latest development came one month after Lee reportedly took leave from the middle of last month. Cliff Hou (侯永清), senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer, is to concurrently take on the role of head of the materials management division, which has been under his supervision, TSMC said. Lee, who joined TSMC in 2022, was appointed senior director of materials management and
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR: Revenue from AI servers made up more than 50 percent of Wistron’s total server revenue in the second quarter, the company said Wistron Corp (緯創) on Tuesday reported a 135.6 percent year-on-year surge in revenue for last month, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, with the momentum expected to extend into the third quarter. Revenue last month reached NT$209.18 billion (US$7.2 billion), a record high for June, bringing second-quarter revenue to NT$551.29 billion, a 129.47 percent annual increase, the company said. Revenue in the first half of the year totaled NT$897.77 billion, up 87.36 percent from a year earlier and also a record high for the period, it said. The company remains cautiously optimistic about AI server shipments in the third quarter,
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Thursday met with US President Donald Trump at the White House, days before a planned trip to China by the head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, people familiar with the matter said. Details of what the two men discussed were not immediately available, and the people familiar with the meeting declined to elaborate on the agenda. Spokespeople for the White House had no immediate comment. Nvidia declined to comment. Nvidia’s CEO has been vocal about the need for US companies to access the world’s largest semiconductor market and is a frequent visitor to China.
RSS