The Ho casino empire begins to emerge from the shadow of the late patriarch

Stanley Ho, the legendary tycoon of the dead game a year ago this month, a complex legacy was left.

It is perhaps not surprising that for a man who had fewer recognized partners (four) but more children (17) than Henry VIII. He also conducted interesting commission proceedings at his major gaming company in Macau, SJM Holdings.

The management of SJM is now Daisy, the daughter of the former patriarch of her second marriage. One of his two professors, Angela Leong, was Ho’s fourth wife. Chan Un Chan is also the director of his third wife, SJM.

For the better part of a decade, as Ho’s health faded, SJM was the subject of what those close to the protagonists call a “war between the second and fourth families”.

This war was finally won by the second family in 2018, when Daisy took the SJM chair instead of her father. Less than a year later, the second family strengthened its hold on Ho’s empire when Daisy’s older sister, Pansy, announced it. an alliance Providing effective control over SJM’s parent company.

Now the question is whether Daisy can chart a new path for SJM, as Ho’s conservatism limited his development.

With the liberalization of the Macau gaming market in 2002, the end of Ho’s 40-year monopoly, the news directed by Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands led to the construction of huge new stations on the Cotai list. .

Adelson, who died there January, and his top officials often rejected Ho, who insisted on the collection of casinos without casks on the densely populated peninsula of Macau.

When I sat down for a recorded interview William Weidner, then president of Sands, before the opening of Venetian Macao in 2007, I hoped to have respect for Adelson’s new arch rival. Instead, he said on his first visit to Macau in 1980, he was reminded by the Lisbon casino in Ho that “the cockfighting scene Deer hunter ”. “In Las Vegas,” Weidner added, “we couldn’t believe a place as badly run as the ones in Lisbon [financially] as he did. “

Ho remained married to his old business model to supply high-end vehicle “whales” in quiet VIP rooms. But Adelson was confident that the new Chinese middle class, when it didn’t lose money at single tables, wanted Las Vegas-style resorts, shows, and convention centers.

When it opened in the summer of 2007, the $ 2.5 billion Venetian had 3,000 hotel rooms and 1.2 square meters of convention space. As a friend of mine who was surprised at the time said “it’s like an airport game, but bigger”.

The popularity of the new generation of Macau casino resorts, which soon pushed past Las Vegas into the world’s largest gaming market, proved that Adelson understood his Chinese customer Ho better than ever.

Ho, however, did not accept defeat. In TJ’s 2008 annual report, SJM’s first and final release, it said the company would continue to “focus on the game business we know best and offer an attractive product aimed at an attractive customer”. He also proudly described the Macau Peninsula as the “home base” of the SJM.

In a sign of the group’s longevity, Ambrose So, the interim CEO of SJM from 2009 to 2017, would sign an overview of the business’s open year business before finally handing the pen to Daisy in 2018.

In the coming months, and 14 years after the transformation of Macau in Venice, SJM will finally emerge from the long shadow of Ho with the opening of the integrated station at the Grand Lisbon Palace in Cotai.

The moment is unlikely to be favorable, as the Macau Covid-19 pandemic continues to recede. Last year, the number of visitors to the territory and the gross income of the game fell by 85% and 79%, respectively, compared to 2019. But eventually, the number of visitors began to rise after Macau reopened its borders for travelers to the Chinese mainland in August.

For SJM, it will depend on the appointment of a new chief operating officer, Frank McFadden, in June. Originally, Ho basketed McFadden’s Adelson in 2006 to oversee the opening of SJM’s current flagship casino in Lisbon.

The Irishman McFadden, who often told friends he expected to retire in County Donegal, made it clear that he believes a new era will attract SJM. “My mandate,” he said Within Asian Gaming magazine Shortly after naming it, “it’s for change.”

tom.mitchell@ft.com