Caesars Entertainment Corp chairman and CEO Gary Loveman has predicted that no new US companies will be granted licences to operate in Macau in the near future. Loveman, chairman of a firm that initially shunned Macau when licences were first being handed out, told the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas that his company has been refused a licence and he has heard no new US firms will be allowed in.
“This is a country that doesn’t really need the money and they have slowed everything in Macau very substantially,” Loveman said. “There will not be another license issued to an American casino operator.”
Six operators, among them the US-based MGM Resorts International, Las Vegas Sands Corp and Wynn Resorts, own licences to operate in Macau and Caesars’ best attempt to crack the market so far has been to acquire a golf course and hope for the best.
The quotes from Loveman could do even more harm to a firm that is already $22.7 billion in debt and saw shares, which were only issued in February, decline by as much as 30 percent. Their hopes now rest on properties in the US with the hope that new casinos in Ohio, Maryland and Massachusetts, as well as the Linq on the Vegas strip, save their bacon. This is in addition to them pinning some hopes on Senator Harry Reid’s online poker bill giving them a reprieve.
If neither of the above measures works then Chapter 11 bankruptcy could be a real possibility for a company that may be forced to spin off their Caesars Interactive division.
