Hills’ move into Nevada will put it in direct competition with Cantor Gaming, the Cantor Fitzgerald subsidiary that operates sportsbooks at a number of Las Vegas casinos. This week, another Cantor subsidiary – Cantor Entertainment Technology (CET) – withdrew the $100m initial public offering registration it filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in December. CET plans to resubmit the registration at a later date under the new confidential filing provisions of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012, which took effect April 5. In doing so, CET becomes the first company to publicly cite a desire for privacy in pulling a planned IPO off the table. Can’t think what Cantor finds too embarrassing to reveal, unless it’s the fact that its sports betting hold percentage is less than half that of the average Vegas book.
Shuffle Master Gaming has paid $2.2m for a nine-acre parcel of Las Vegas turf on which it plans to construct a new corporate HQ and manufacturing office. The blueprints envision a 110k-square-foot space grouping the company’s various operations – currently scattered over four separate locations – under a single zip code. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that construction on Shuffle Master’s new Xanadu is slated to begin this summer with a fall 2013 completion date.
Also planning a move to larger digs is BMM International, which tests and certifies gaming technology for both brick-and-mortar and online casinos. BMM’s Wendy Anderson told Vegas Inc. that the company plans to add another 100 employees to its current 50-person roster to handle the expected influx of new business prompted by Nevada’s decision to outsource the technology testing of the state’s prospective online poker licensees. The company says the new digs will be four times larger than their current lodgings.