SJM Holdings have taken a stake in the holding company that is redeveloping a Macau entertainment complex. The company owned by the family of Stanley Ho took a 4 percent stake in Macau Legend Development Ltd, paying a sum totaling HK$480million. The money is part of the HK$5billion budget that has been set aside to redevelop the Macau Fisherman’s Wharf theme park, which also includes the Babylon Casino. Expansion will start with refurbishment of the theme park, the addition of two hotels, a yacht club and a dinosaur museum, according to Macau Business. The project will be completed by the end of 2015 and it’s hoped it will bring a new lease of the life to the seven-year-old complex.
Investigative site CasinoLeaks-Macau has closed down with no reasons as to why they’re doing so. Visitors to the site were met with a message reading: “Casinoleaks-Macau.com is shutting down. Thank you for your interest”. The site has been running since March and had promised to release all the information it could on “organized crime” affecting Macau’s gambling industry and was funded by US trade union the International Union of Operating Engineers. When it was operating the site exposed a number of junket operators, such as Suncity Group and Neptune Group, and their dealings with Las Vegas based casino firms doing business in the Far East.
Macau’s gross domestic product growth has dropped significantly in the second quarter with a number of factors blamed for the slowdown. The Statistics and Census Service reported that GDP grew 7.3 percent – when last year it grew 18.6 percent. Slowing of the GDP was clamed on decelerating growth in gambling revenues, investment and visitor spending. The growth rate was the slowest in around three years.
