{"id":16053,"date":"2015-05-13T11:52:28","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T19:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=16053"},"modified":"2015-05-13T11:52:28","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T19:52:28","slug":"long-road-back-for-macao-phua-case-becomes-a-federal-obsession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/long-road-back-for-macao-phua-case-becomes-a-federal-obsession\/","title":{"rendered":"Long road back for Macao; Phua case becomes a federal obsession"},"content":{"rendered":"

Macao<\/strong>‘s status as shorthand for “corruption” got another bump this week when it was announced that former bureaucrat Li Huabo<\/strong> had gambled away $4 million in the casino \"Venetian<\/a>enclave, then absconded with $16 million in stolen. As deleterious as that news may be, the real concern is erosion in the mass-market segment<\/a>, those steady bread-and-butter players upon whom companies like Sands China<\/strong> is so reliant.\u00a0\u201cNot only is spend per visitor falling, Macau\u2019s visitor arrivals had also fallen 4 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2015, worst decline since \u00a0visa restrictions in 2008-09,\u201d wrote Deutsche Bank<\/strong> analyst Karen Tang<\/strong>, who projects lower mass-market traffic extending into the coming years.<\/p>\n

Hoteliers have particular reason to be concerned, given a 10% drop in overnight stays from last year. Some of those tourists, at least the more \"Sands-MACAO\"<\/a>affluent ones, are seen to be spurning Macao<\/strong> in favor of Australia<\/strong>, of new megaresorts in the Philippines<\/strong> and of tourist-oriented casinos in Vietnam<\/strong>. VIP junket operators like Suncity<\/strong> are also looking to those countries and others as markets to which they can farm out their players, not least because lower taxes allow them to offer more attractive promotions than they can in China<\/strong>. Two analysts at UBS Securities Asia<\/strong>, Angus Chan<\/strong> and Anthony Wong<\/strong>, took issue with Wall Street<\/strong> consensus, writing\u00a0\u201cWe believe there have been no clear signs of sequential demand recovery, which is assumed in current consensus forecasts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding to the air of gloom, Tang wrote,\u00a0\u201cWe forecast that Macau\u2019s mass table yield will fall another 30 percent by 2017 as supply outstrips demand.\u201d Macao is scarcely going to yield its primacy among world gaming markets but operators and analysts may have underestimated its volatility.<\/p>\n

* Las Vegas<\/strong> has much less serious problems, the latest being a temporary banner (which Mayor Carolyn Goodman<\/strong> wants to transform into a permanent archway<\/a>) just north of SLS Las Vegas<\/strong>, drawing visitors to Downtown with the slogan, “Keep the party going!” By all means do, but, despite much wishful thinking by SLS in particular, Sahara Avenue<\/strong> isn’t the “doorstep” of Downtown, which must be reached by a long drive up a mostly skeevy stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard<\/strong>. Objections to the banner range from its possibly constituting a distraction from traffic lights to its butt-ugliness. However, with $35,000 already invested, the City of Las Vegas is going to keep that banner up, come Hell or high water, one last bit of sensory overload before you leave the signage-glutted Strip.<\/p>\n

* Federal prosecutors are refiling charges against Paul Phua<\/strong> and upping the ante against the poker pro by adding a count of conspiracy<\/a>, which Phua attorney David Chesnoff<\/strong> called “the darling of a prosecutor\u2019s nursery.\u201d Although evidence gathered from Phua’s Caesars Palace<\/strong> villa has been tossed, in particular due to governmental misrepresentations used to obtain a search warrant, what FBI<\/strong> agents found in two ancillary villas remains in play — include the setup for a “boiler room” that allegedly took World Cup<\/strong> bets by phone. The government is sailing really close to the wind on this case but it’s not going to let Phua go without a fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Macao‘s status as shorthand for “corruption” got another bump this week when it was announced that former bureaucrat Li Huabo had gambled away $4 million in the casino enclave, then absconded with $16 million in stolen. As deleterious as that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[103,51,14,7,62,192,12,195,74,9,19,177,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16053"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16054,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16053\/revisions\/16054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}