Word: crowning
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Business in Asia is played very much like ice hockey. The big guys - state-backed behemoths, massive conglomerates and supertycoons - almost always pin smaller enterprises against the glass to score the plum deal. So it seemed for Lawrence Ho, CEO of NASDAQ-listed casino operator Melco Crown Entertainment. Less than a year ago, the giants of the gaming industry - Vegas legends Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands - had shoved the little-known Ho to the edge of Asia's casino market. But his rivals should have taken note of how Ho, a recreational hockey player, likes...
...same to the Vegas big shots. Melco Crown is one of only six companies permitted to run casinos in Macau, the Chinese enclave that has surpassed Las Vegas in total gambling revenue. And Ho, 31, has matched his competitors chip for chip. His first casino-hotel, the Crown Macau, saw few customers when it opened in May 2007. But Melco Crown swiftly closed the gap. Its market share of 16% in the first half of 2008 was just a whisker behind Wynn with 17% and Las Vegas Sands at 21%, according to Citi Investment Research. More impressively, the Crown...
...Pansy both started working in the family business but struck out on their own after the market opened up - in competition with their father. Pansy teamed with Vegas firm MGM Mirage to develop casino-hotels in Macau, opening the MGM Grand Macau in 2007. Stanley and Lawrence founded Melco Crown as part of a joint venture with Australia's Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd., founded by the late billionaire Kerry Packer. (Kerry's son James is now co-chairman of Melco Crown.) Citing a conflict of interest, Stanley later left the operation to run his original casino company, Sociedade de Jogos...
...first, Ho looked unlikely to contribute much to the family empire. The venture's first major investment, the $524 million, 216-room Crown Macau, appeared a feeble alternative to the ornate 600-room Wynn Macau, which opened in 2006, and Adelson's gargantuan 3,000-room Venetian, a re-creation of his famed Vegas resort that opened three months after the Crown Macau. Located on one of the enclave's outer islands, the Crown was too far from the city's other casinos to attract walk-in gamblers. In the month of its opening, the Crown claimed an embarrassing...
...there are hundreds of ethnic American Pashtuns ready to go work for the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but their murky family and tribal ties prevent them from being hired. However, they could be brought in with lower security clearances. Spies in the field rarely need to see the crown jewels to do their...