Marina Bay Sands: proceeding on schedule.
Las Vegas Sands executives huddled with Singapore officials yesterday earlier this week to, as JP Morgan puts it, “discuss topics … including the pace of construction.” In other words, they were bracing Singaporean leaders for yesterday’s SEC bombshell.
As far as discussing “the pace of construction,” normally I’d take that to mean that a delay in the schedule was about to be announced. But the tea leaves indicate the message was that Marina Bay Sands is still Project Numero Uno for the company.
It’s unclear whether Venetian doge Sheldon Adelson was at the aforesaid meeting (the wording is fuzzy but implies he wasn’t there). However, he did release a statement in which he characterized work on MBS as “rapid.” He also heard the good news that Singaporean regulators have deemed the MBS slot floor up to snuff. Already Sands is talking about going from 600 to 1,000 slot machines, so they must be pretty sanguine about their prospects along the Johore Strait.
At least Boyd Gaming execs can take some solace from Adelson’s plight. Sands has raised the prospect of putting its unfinished “St. Reggie’s” condo literally and figuratively under wraps for the time being. That’d be a broken front tooth on the Strip possibly even harder to ignore than the partial skeleton that is Echelon.
