
Crown Resorts will divest it self of its staying shares in Melco Resorts and Entertainment, the company that was, until last month, known as Melco Crown. The move completes James Packer’s total withdrawal from Macau.
James Packer’s timing had been off on Macau, but the Asia arrests had been the nail that is final the coffin. Could Crown’s present strategies be part of a plan to maneuver into a completely new market.
The news comes nearly exactly one after Packer’s Crown Resorts made the shock decision to cut its stake in the company it had formed jointly with Lawrence Ho’s Melco International from 34.3 percent to 27.4 percent year. This had been just five months after the opening of Melco Crown’s long-awaited $4.5 billion Studio City resort.
In hindsight, the timing could hardly have already been worse. After nearly two years of tumbling revenues in Macau, Crown Resorts desired to rein in its worldwide expansion and reduce its exposure to the gambling hub to be able to concentrate on projects closer to home.
Timing is Everything
Packer’s Asian dream had unsuccessful, shattered by Beijing’s anti-corruption drive of 2014. The Melco Crown properties, cooked up in a climate of apparently unassailable prosperity for Macau, then one associated with the fastest-growing economies on the planet, are not providing the comes back he expected.
‘I don’t think some of the operators could ha Read more…