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Based in Macau, Inside Asian Gaming is the first and only publication devoted to one of the region’s fastest growing industries.
Inside Asian Gaming has dedicated its September 2014 issue to the business men and women who are leading the way for this most dynamic of the world’s gaming regions as it marches toward the future.
The top five in the list of 50 (http://www.asgam.com/news/item/2486) are 1 Sheldon Adelson, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands Corp; Francis Lui Deputy Chairman, Galaxy Entertainment Group; Lim Kok Thay, Executive Chairman a
nd CEO Genting Berhad; Lawrence Ho, Co-Chairman and CEO Melco Crown Entertainment and Steve Wynn, Chairman and CEO Wynn Resorts.
World famous gaming mogul James Packer, Executive Chairman, Crown Resorts Co-Chairman, Melco Crown Entertainment was named at number eight.
Dhammika was ranked above some of other well known names including Clarence Chung, Chairman and President, Melco Crown Philippines, Chairman and CEO Entertainment Gaming Asia, Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, Chief Executive Officer, Hong Kong Jockey Club; David Chow CO-Chairman and CEO Macau Legend Development, Jaydev Mody, Chairman, Delta Corp., and Steven Tight President International Development, Caesars Entertainment.
Following are the profiles on the two Sri Lankans featured in the Asian Gaming Top 50 (http://www.asgam.com/mags/201409/#1)
Dhammika Perera, Chairman and Managing Director, Vallibel One: The Government of Sri Lanka wants tourism to become the island nation’s primary generator of foreign exchange earnings over the next three years and is manoeuvring resort casinos into the mainstream of that push.
Tourist arrivals surged 46% in 2010, the first full year of peace following the defeat of an armed revolt by the island’s ethnic Tamils that had battered the country for a generation. Arrivals last year were up 26.7% to 1.27 million. And the Government has given the green light to three casino resort projects: the $350 million Crown Colombo spearheaded by James Packer and local partner Ravi Wijeratne; an $850 million resort by Sri Lanka’s largest publicly traded company, John Keells Holdings; and the $350 million Queensbury proposed by Vallibel One, owned by one of Sri Lanka’s richest men – perhaps the richest – Dhammika Perera. The future of Crown’s project now looks uncertain, but Perera is already the biggest casino operator in the country and looks set to push ahead with Queensbury.
The handful of small casinos currently catering to the Colombo tourist trade operated for years as “recreation clubs” before their existence was formally recognised by legislation passed in November 2010. Perera owns three of the four that are officially sanctioned – the ones registered with the country’s Inland Revenue Department to pay gaming levies. All are located in Colombo, and the biggest, Bally’s, has 80 table games (his Bellagio has 40 and his MGM Colombo another 40). Following the transfer of their de facto licenses to larger properties, including the 40-story, 500-room Queensbury, they will be gradually phased out.
Perera is gifted with a keen ability to analyse investments. According to a recent profile in Forbes, “Using mathematical models that he’s developed over the years, he’s a numbers guy who hunts for undervalued assets and then swoops in. Once he has the right managers in place, he gives them free rein.”
Back in 1999, Perera developed a 20-year plan to become the country’s leader in each of 12 sectors – tourism among them – by 2019. The 46-year-old tycoon’s empire now boasts 23 listed companies that account for 8% of all companies traded on the Colombo Stock Exchange and dozens of private ones. His reach extends to Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, the UK and elsewhere, and his companies employ some 62,000 people. In anticipation of the end of the civil war, he began investing in the tourism sector in 2000 and now has a number of luxury resorts and hotels with 600 rooms in total and another 1,200 under development.
Sri Lanka’s proximity to India bodes well for Perera’s Queensbury, offering easy access to the subcontinent’s increasingly affluent and gambling-hungry millions. According to Manav Thadani, who heads the Indian office of hospitality consulting firm HVS, “Right now, if you look at the tourist arrivals into Sri Lanka, Indians dominate that, and the thought process is that that number could go up significantly if they had casinos because casinos are something which currently are prohibited in India.”
The upcoming resorts could also help boost tourism, particularly at the high end, simply by addressing the country’s shortage of quality tourist accommodation.
Perennially rated one of the world’s top destinations by the likes of Lonely Planet, Conde Nast and The New York Times, the “Pearl of the Indian Ocean,” as Sri Lanka is known, offers no end of delights for the traveler—beaches, tropical forests, lush highland valleys, waterfalls, botanical gardens, sprawling tea plantations, centuries-old temples, ornate colonial-era landmarks, 15 national parks in all, eight UNESCO World Heritage sites, even wild elephants – but what it doesn’t have is anywhere near enough tourist-calibre hotel rooms to accommodate the Government’s target of 2.5 million visitor arrivals by 2016.
Ravi Wijeratne, Chairman, Rank Holdings Ltd.: Crown Resorts and its Sri Lanka partner Ravi Wijeratne want to develop a $350 million resort casino in the capital of Colombo. The Government loves the idea. But political opposition to the terms of the deal, coupled with the hostility of the island nation’s influential Buddhist clergy, self-appointed guardians of its morals, has forced the administration of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to tone down its support, and construction has yet to start. Rajapaksa is expected to seek a third term in elections that could be held as soon as January, and it’s not likely that Crown Colombo, as it’s called, will break ground before then.
The 36-story, 400-room complex is slated to be built on a lakeside plot in the capital’s tourist core, and as owner of two of the country’s five officially recognised casinos (none are actually licensed), Wijeratne is its key. The target market is “rich Indians,” as he puts it, big spenders who might otherwise go to Macau or Singapore to gamble. “We plan to divert them to Colombo, which is nearer to their homes,” he says. The potential is huge and still untapped. By his estimation, most of Sri Lanka’s foreign players come from China and Singapore, with India’s contribution “barely 2%”.
He is keen to point out also that it was he who brought James Packer to Sri Lanka. “The Government is not responsible in any manner for James Packer’s involvement in the project,” he said in a recent interview. “My board of directors discussed what international company should undertake the management of the hotel. I visited several countries and met the business community. I realised that there was no match for James Packer. It was I who selected him and not the Government.”
Wijeratne, one of Sri Lanka’s pre-eminent entrepreneurs, returned to the island in 1992 after completing his education in the UK. He’s built up a diversified portfolio of businesses under his flagship, Rank Holdings, but the civil war that raged in the north of the country until 2010 forced him to put on hold his ambition to expand it with world-class hospitality offerings. Now that peace reigns, he is aggressively pushing ahead.
The Government sees foreign tourism as a key element in Sri Lanka’s post-war economic future and has approved two other major resort casino projects for Colombo – the $350 million Queensbury proposed by Sri Lanka’s Vallibel One conglomerate and an $850 million complex spearheaded by regional hospitality giant John Keells Holdings, the country’s largest publicly traded company.
