The partnership between Bloomberry Resorts Corp. and Global Gaming Philippines LLC (GGAM) was supposed to bring the former’s resort and casino, Solaire Manila, to levels on par with any other of its kind in Macau.
But as it turns out, the partnership has fallen by the wayside faster than Miley Cyrus’girl-next-door image after Bloomberry terminated its management services agreement with GGAM over what it deemed as the latter’s failure to manage.
The announcement was made in a disclosure to the stock exchange when Bloomberry disclosed that it had fired Solaire’s chief operating officer, Michael French, who is also the GGAM representative in the casino.
According to Bloomberry, GGAM was not living up to the expectations set for it with its management of Solaire, failing to perform to its obligations and deliverables that were part of the company’s management services agreement with the casino.
Needless to say, GGAM isn’t taking getting the boot and the subsequent public dress down sitting down. In its own statement addressing Bloomberry’s decision to cut ties with the company, GGAM said that it will head to Singapore to seek arbitration in an effort to resolve the issue. And that was after throwing its own pot shot at Bloomberry, calling the latter’s actions as having no factual and legal validity.
“Bloomberry has materially breached that agreement and GGAM is pursuing its rights under that contract in arbitration in Singapore,” the Las Vegas-based company added, further underscoring what could potentially be a messy legal battle between the two sides.
The deteriorating relationship between the two companies was as unexpected as it was shocking. After all, Solaire Manila is only six months old. It also comes less than a year after GGAM exercised its equity option to up its stake in Bloomberry to 8.7%, allowing the company to acquire 921.8 million shares of Bloomberry valued at Php1 plus $15 million.
There’s no telling what’s going to happen to those shares now that Bloomberry essentially sent GGAM packing for allegedly not doing its job. For now, the casino is expected to hire a suitable replacement to take the place of the fired Michael French, opting only to say that the next CEO will be an “experienced” casino hotel executive.
Make no mistake: this whole debacle is still far from over and has all the makings of a long-running legal dispute see its share of casualties in the long run. Who and how many remains to be seen, but both companies appear to be standing their ground and are ready to fight it out.
In the words of Terrell Owens, “go get your popcorn ready”.
