If you have never heard about the Ho family, you will do. Stanley Ho is the head of the family, and is basically the guy who started Macau. But he is slowing handing the reins over to his empire (if he hasn’t officially already), and in the meantime his clan continues to be busy in Macau.
Lawrence Ho,one of 17 children born to casino and property magnate Stanley Ho has just announced that his own casino company Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd.’s plans to list its shares on the Hong Kong stock market.
Melco Crown operates the City of Dreams casino in Macau, a Chinese enclave geared up to hoover in in over 5x the gambling revenue of the Las Vegas Stripin 2011. As with many Asian family businesses, companies can be complicatedly interlinked and Lawrence Ho’s relationships with other Ho family businesses include other big names such as Hong Kong-listed SJM Holdings Ltd., Shun Tak Holdings Ltd., and MGM China Holdings Ltd.
There was, until recently, a fierce family spat over “the Stanley Ho empire” : Stanley himself, whose health is failing and just headed into his nineties, accused the offspring of his second wife of getting together with his third wife to nab the holding company that owned the bulk of his assets.
Lawrence and his high flying sister Pansy , who is the managing director of Shun Tak are members of Stanley Ho’s second family. Confused? Read on…!
Angela Leong, SJM’s managing director, is the woman Stanley Ho refers to as his fourth wife.
Lawrence Ho, who is a sprightly 34, has been CEO and co-chair of Melco Crown since 2004. The company, is run by Ho and James Packer, the son of the late Australian high roller, casino-and-media magnate Kerry Packer, and is working on its second casino palace in Macau’s Cotai Strip area.
Melco Crown Entertainment said it intends to list its shares in Hong Kong by Dec. 7, joining its five main competitors on the Hang Seng exchange.
If you like a flutter on casino shares, it could give you another angle to get into the market.
