Was Stanley Ho hedging his bets with the Australian Labour Party?
An eye-in-the-sky view of the casino trade
Neil Gough 6 February 2009
Stanley Ho Hung-sun is known as a charitable man. But that doesn’t necessarily explain the A$1.6 million (HK$8 million) the Macau gaming magnate and his associates tried to donate to Australia’s ruling Labour Party during the 2007-08 financial year.
Most of the donations were to the local Labour Party branch in New South Wales, which is of course home to Sydney. It is also home to the Star City casino, which sits on Sydney Harbour and is the only casino in the state.
Star City has been licensed as a Sydney-area monopoly since 1994 and is currently owned by Tabcorp Holdings, Australia’s largest casino operator and sport book. The property includes a 480-room hotel and a 200-table casino.
In 2007, Star City’s monopoly gaming licence was up for renewal. It appears that at the time, talks between Tabcorp and New South Wales gaming officials weren’t going smoothly. The licence was set to expire on September 13, 2007 - but the two parties failed to reach an agreement on new terms by that deadline, and extended the deadline to June 30, 2008.
Around the time the casino licence negotiations were under way, Mr. Ho and associates made some very significant donations to New South Wales Labour (he had also been a donor in previous years).
In September and October of 2007, the local Labour Party branch booked two separate donations of A$50,000 each from Anthony Chan Wai-lun, an executive director and 22-year veteran of Mr. Ho’s conglomerate Shun Tak Holdings.
In October 2007, it received A$400,000 from Mr. Ho himself. The next month, New South Wales Labour received A$600,000 from Hungtat Worldwide, a Gold Coast-based company that lists Mr. Ho as a director.
Mr. Ho’s fourth wife, Angela Leong On-kei, that same year attempted to donate A$499,980 to the Labour Party’s national office. But The Australian reported this week that Labour turned down Ms. Leong’s donation after conducting “due diligence” and, separately, that the New South Wales branch returned Hungtat’s funds.
Now, a cynical mind might speculate that Mr. Ho and his associates made their donations in the hope of gaining something more than the general feeling of satisfaction that comes from supporting democracy at work.
Way back in the late 1980s, when Sydney was kicking around plans for its first casino, Mr. Ho was reportedly part of a consortium that bid for a licence. But he reportedly backed out of the bidding before regulators were able to publish the results of their due diligence background investigations on the would-be casino operators.
A cynical mind might ask whether Mr. Ho & Co might have, in fact, been interested in taking a second crack at winning the licence to operate a casino that did A$566.2 million in gaming revenue in the year to June last year and brought in 9.28 million patrons.
To be sure, those given to cynicism might note that, at A$112,000 for the 2007-08 financial year, the donations that the New South Wales Labour Party received from Star City Sydney did indeed appear paltry compared to Mr. Ho’s largesse. Alas, All In does not have a cynical mind.
In the end, Tabcorp won a 12-year extension of its Sydney casino monopoly, announced on October 30, 2007. As part of the revised licence terms, Tabcorp agreed to a A$100 million upfront payment and an effective 32 per cent rise in gaming taxes over five years. It would appear that both taxpayers and Labour got nice pay days out of the deal. That’s real democracy in action.
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Was Stanley Ho hedging his bets with the Australian Labour Party?
An eye-in-the-sky view of the casino trade
Neil Gough
6 February 2009
Stanley Ho Hung-sun is known as a charitable man. But that doesn’t necessarily explain the A$1.6 million (HK$8 million) the Macau gaming magnate and his associates tried to donate to Australia’s ruling Labour Party during the 2007-08 financial year.
Most of the donations were to the local Labour Party branch in New South Wales, which is of course home to Sydney. It is also home to the Star City casino, which sits on Sydney Harbour and is the only casino in the state.
Star City has been licensed as a Sydney-area monopoly since 1994 and is currently owned by Tabcorp Holdings, Australia’s largest casino operator and sport book. The property includes a 480-room hotel and a 200-table casino.
In 2007, Star City’s monopoly gaming licence was up for renewal. It appears that at the time, talks between Tabcorp and New South Wales gaming officials weren’t going smoothly. The licence was set to expire on September 13, 2007 - but the two parties failed to reach an agreement on new terms by that deadline, and extended the deadline to June 30, 2008.
Around the time the casino licence negotiations were under way, Mr. Ho and associates made some very significant donations to New South Wales Labour (he had also been a donor in previous years).
In September and October of 2007, the local Labour Party branch booked two separate donations of A$50,000 each from Anthony Chan Wai-lun, an executive director and 22-year veteran of Mr. Ho’s conglomerate Shun Tak Holdings.
In October 2007, it received A$400,000 from Mr. Ho himself. The next month, New South Wales Labour received A$600,000 from Hungtat Worldwide, a Gold Coast-based company that lists Mr. Ho as a director.
Mr. Ho’s fourth wife, Angela Leong On-kei, that same year attempted to donate A$499,980 to the Labour Party’s national office. But The Australian reported this week that Labour turned down Ms. Leong’s donation after conducting “due diligence” and, separately, that the New South Wales branch returned Hungtat’s funds.
Now, a cynical mind might speculate that Mr. Ho and his associates made their donations in the hope of gaining something more than the general feeling of satisfaction that comes from supporting democracy at work.
Way back in the late 1980s, when Sydney was kicking around plans for its first casino, Mr. Ho was reportedly part of a consortium that bid for a licence. But he reportedly backed out of the bidding before regulators were able to publish the results of their due diligence background investigations on the would-be casino operators.
A cynical mind might ask whether Mr. Ho & Co might have, in fact, been interested in taking a second crack at winning the licence to operate a casino that did A$566.2 million in gaming revenue in the year to June last year and brought in 9.28 million patrons.
To be sure, those given to cynicism might note that, at A$112,000 for the 2007-08 financial year, the donations that the New South Wales Labour Party received from Star City Sydney did indeed appear paltry compared to Mr. Ho’s largesse. Alas, All In does not have a cynical mind.
In the end, Tabcorp won a 12-year extension of its Sydney casino monopoly, announced on October 30, 2007. As part of the revised licence terms, Tabcorp agreed to a A$100 million upfront payment and an effective 32 per cent rise in gaming taxes over five years. It would appear that both taxpayers and Labour got nice pay days out of the deal. That’s real democracy in action.
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