{"id":5668,"date":"2011-01-26T13:54:54","date_gmt":"2011-01-26T21:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=5668"},"modified":"2022-04-06T06:46:01","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T14:46:01","slug":"stanley-ho-abdicates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/stanley-ho-abdicates\/","title":{"rendered":"Stanley Ho abdicates"},"content":{"rendered":"

So this is how Stanley Ho<\/strong>‘s world ends: Not with a bang but with the ancient casino vizier giving a televised address in which he laboriously delivered lines from a cue card<\/a> and ceded control<\/a> of his Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau<\/strong> to third wife Ina Chan<\/strong>. From Mrs. Chan also came the news that Ho had sacked lawyer Gordon Oldham<\/strong>. “Did so,” she proclaimed. “Did not<\/a>” (or words to that effect), replied Oldham. For good measure, he derided Chan as Ho’s “third mistress.”<\/p>\n

\"\"The sad-sounding spectacle raises questions of Ho’s mental competence. He was ferried to the Chan residence<\/a>, whereupon he read from idiot boards<\/a>, with daughter Florinda Ho<\/strong> sticking a microphone under his face. Ho seems for all the world like a puppet — or a volleyball — fought over by competing branches of his thicket-like family tree<\/a>. Had he known it would come to this, perhaps Dr. Ho would have had a vasectomy, lo, those many years ago.<\/p>\n

(Reporters are routinely mystified as to whether Stanley Ho’s four marriages are sequential, concurrent or even legitimate. The number of his progeny has, in the last 24 hours alone, been variously reported as 14, 16 and 17.)<\/p>\n

\"\"Among the suspicious aspects<\/strong> of the tussle over STDM is its reversal of what appeared to be an orderly transfer of power to most-recent wife and Sociedade de Jogos de Macau<\/strong> Managing Director Angela Leong<\/strong>. His first wife, Clementina De Mello Leitao<\/strong>, is deceased and her children, by a remarkable coincidence, find themselves excluded from the division of spoils. Also, Oldham’s reaffirmation of his (and, by implication, Leong’s) good standing came after a meeting that followed<\/em> what one might call “the Chan communiqu\u00e9s<\/a>.” Then again, it’s possible that Ho has become so advanced in his dotage — although Oldham contends otherwise<\/a> — that he tells each person successively what they want to hear from him. If this indeed the palace coup that is appears, circumstantial evidence points to daughter Daisy Ho<\/strong><\/a> as its presiding genius.<\/p>\n

\"\"All this dissension<\/strong> will cause rivals Sheldon Adelson<\/strong>, Steve Wynn<\/strong> and Galaxy Entertainment<\/strong> scant grief. There are at least two potential benefits for them. Hotels which subcontract their casinos to Ho’s (or is it Chan’s?) SJM may rethink their allegiance<\/a>. Two, this is likely to further impede SJM’s sluggish development of its Cotai Strip™<\/strong> land. Macao<\/strong>‘s government has to be congratulating itself on the bullet it dodged by denying Ho’s request that Adelson’s Sites 7 & 8 be remanded to SJM instead.<\/p>\n

Macanese law precludes<\/a> either Melco Crown Entertainment<\/strong> CEO Lawrence Ho<\/strong> or MGM Grand Paradise<\/strong> Managing Director Pansy Ho<\/strong> (who’s tight with the central government in Peking<\/strong>) for holding a controlling stake in SJM. However, since both received 9.9% stakes in STDM when the smoke cleared, Melco, MGM Resorts International<\/strong>‘s Macao subsidiary and SJM now enjoy a rather cozy interlocking ownership — another potential headache for Fernando Chui<\/strong>‘s regime.<\/p>\n

\"\"Meanwhile, halfway around the world<\/strong>, Lawrence Ho (left<\/em>) was accepting three major awards on behalf of Melco Crown (which he co-owns with Australian magnate James Packer<\/strong>), as well as one for Dear Old Dad’s “Outstanding Contribution to the Gaming Industry.\u201d If by that they mean, “outstanding contribution to the perception that the gaming industry is hopelessly mobbed-up,” I heartily second the accolade. Now free from the cares of casino ownership, the Ho family patriarch and former World War II collaborator<\/a> can return to his hobby of paying mind-boggling sums for white truffles<\/strong>. At least the money is going toward cancer research<\/a>, so some <\/em>good news can be said to have come out of the Ho empire this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So this is how Stanley Ho‘s world ends: Not with a bang but with the ancient casino vizier giving a televised address in which he laboriously delivered lines from a cue card and ceded control of his Sociedade de Turismo … 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":[24,28,104,140,22,96,94,62,93,11,110,25,12,61,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5668"}],"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=5668"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30992,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5668\/revisions\/30992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}