Vegas boss hired for Scots' casino
WILLIAM LYONS AND TERRY MURDEN
THE former chief executive of the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas - the largest betting complex in the world - has been hired to run a £350m casino resort off the Taiwan coast being developed by three Scottish businessmen.
Amazing Holdings, quoted on Aim, is chaired by accountant and former Noble Grossart investment banker David Mathewson, who is planning the development on a 27-acre beachfront plot in the Penghu islands.
It will include a top-of-the-range hotel and entertainment complex that would attract high-rolling gambling tourists from Taiwan and mainland China - while also luring punters from Asia's current casino mecca, Macau.
Under the terms of the deal Navegante Group, owned by the Las Vegas gambling guru Larry Woolf, will run and operate the casino.
Finance director Ian Irvin, a former board member of Magnum Power, who sits on the Amazing board with fellow Scot Tim Potter, said the deal showed that Amazing was now in the driving seat to move forward. "Things are moving along nicely, there is a lot of activity bubbling underneath in South-east Asia and we felt the time was right to put down a marker," he said. "Larry is an experienced operator and this shows our determination to build a world-class resort."
Gambling is not yet legal in Taiwan but plans are being developed as part of a government strategy to create a tourism industry. Singapore, renowned for its ultra-conservative policies, has now approved plans to legalise gambling in a limited form - giving the Taiwanese a further prompt to change the law.
Amazing is likely to be the first company to win a gambling licence from the Taiwanese authorities and plans to use the experience of its board to help the authorities draft the gambling legislation.
The strategy is to emulate the success of Macau. The city, which is only a short ferry trip from Hong Kong, has built a hugely successful gambling industry in the past decade and now pays out more in winnings than Las Vegas.
Irvin stresses that although he doesn't want to take anything for granted, he believes they could see a change in the gambling laws this side of Chinese New Year.
He added: "The only place where there is any sizeable gaming centre in South-east Asia is Macau and some of the numbers that are coming out of there are frankly staggering. It is hard to get your head round it. Macau has already outstripped Las Vegas in terms of gaming revenue."
There are currently 1.3 million Taiwanese travelling to Macau every year to use the casinos, while a total of 10 million go on foreign trips specifically to gamble. Thanks to the rise of the Chinese middle classes, tourism in Asia is also set to rocket over the next few years. The World Tourist Organisation estimates that 100 million Chinese will be looking for sunshine holidays by 2020.
Amazing came to the market in 2005 after the purchase of the 27 acre site, which at the time was the biggest real estate deal ever done in Taiwan.
Although still based in Edinburgh, Irvin has been dedicating his time to Taiwanese projects since leaving Livingston-based Magnum Power in 1996. Magnum Power hit troubles after Irvin and the other founders left. The company is now a cash shell called RAM Investments.
Potter has been in Taiwan for 25 years and regularly met Irvin when he was on trips to Taiwan with Magnum.
The Penghu Islands lie just below the Tropic of Cancer in the Taiwan Strait.
This article: http://business.scotsman.com/media.cfm?id=1180752007 |
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