The decline and fall of Stanley Ho

As predictable as the sunrise, today’s headlines brought yet another reversal in the Stanley Ho vs. His Wives & Kids saga, “an ugly and Byzantine family squabble” that is also driving down the value of Sociedade de Jogos de Macau stock. Further complicating matters, the shareholder list of parent company Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau conveniently went missing some time back.

(For those of you keeping score at home, Agence France Presse provides a helpful cheat sheet as to which of the squabbling children were sired off which of Dr. Ho’s four wives. I mean, when you have 17 offspring it must be hard keeping track of them all.) The controversial stock-transfer document that set off the fracas can be seen here.

Scarcely was the old polygamist back in the bosom of lawyer Gordon Oldham than he apparently un-abdicated Tuesday’s televised abdication. Now he — or Oldham — is suing several family members. These include MGM Grand Paradise Managing Director Pansy Ho (left), who local media suspect of being the coup leader, and Melco Crown Entertainment CEO Lawrence Ho (who’s spent the week subbing for his ailing father in London). SJM Managing Director Angela Leong‘s growing stake in the company threatened the supremacy of Pansy-run Shun Tak Holdings over Ho’s casinos, apparently setting off this week’s power struggle, which saw the 89-year-old patriarch sign two different versions of how he intended to divide his assets in the space of 48 hours.

Although Oldham maintains that his client is in full possession of his faculties, would the Stanley Ho of days past felt very pressurized [sic] by his family to read out that statement,” propped up — as seen above — by Ina Chan (Wife #3) and daughter Florinda Ho? Would he have degraded himself thusly just to appease a nettled spouse?

The wild card in this high-stakes game is second daughter Angela Ho. She’s not at all happy about seeing the first generation of Ho offspring get no slice of the STDM/SJM pie. Whatever her father does, it looks like she’s prepared to make a protracted stink about this week’s sudden divvying up of the Ho empire. As for MGM Resorts International CEO Jim Murren, there’s probably not enough Tums in the world to get him through the week. His company’s taken a lot of bullets for Pansy Ho and there she is making global headlines — and not in a good way.