How Macau gambling king Stanley Ho primed James Packer for success

Macau gambling king Stanley Ho, who built a business empire from scratch and became one of Asia’s richest men, has died aged 98.

Stanley Ho in Macau, China. Picture: Paul Hilton/Bloomberg News.

James Packer will never forget the day in 2006 when Macau gambling king Stanley Ho’s blessing launched the billionaire’s Asian gaming joint venture with the man he came to call his brother, Stanley’s son Lawrence.

Stanley Ho’s flagship SJM Holdings – one of the world’s most lucrative gaming businesses valued at about $US6bn ($9.2bn) – had a contract with his son’s Melco Group to run casinos in Macau, but that day, the Macau gaming magnate simply tore it up and wished his son and his Australian business partner the best of luck in their new adventure.

When they met again later that year in Hong Kong, Ho senior gave Packer a lucky gold coin.

It was the last time Packer saw Stanley Ho, one of Asia’s richest men and the legend of the Macau gaming industry who died on Tuesday in Hong Kong at the age of 98 after years of battling ill-health.

But for Lawrence Ho, the independence from his father was a welcome blessing.

“Getting out of working with my family and my father’s company was worth any price … My father was very legendary. But it was not so much about him. It was the people surrounding him that were very problematic. The management team,’’ Ho junior said in an interview with this author for the biography of Packer’s life, The Price of Fortune that was published in 2018.

“When you look at that company’s market capitalisation now, it is half of ours. And they had the monopoly for 40 years and a good head start.’’

Packer’s Crown Resorts company went on to make billions of dollars out of its Macau investment before being forced to sell out of the Chinese gaming province after its staff were spectacularly arrested at the end of 2016.

But the shadow of Stanley Ho’s SJM, which has been banned from bidding for casinos in Australia, the US, Singapore and the Philippines because of its alleged links with organised crime, – links that Ho denied – loomed large again over Packer and his business partner last year when the later agreed to pay $1.76bn for a 19.9 per cent stake in Crown Resorts.

At the time Lawrence Ho again played down his links to his father.

James Packer. Pictuer: Aaron Francis/The Australian

“I have had to deal with it my entire life,’’ he told this author last year when asked about managing perceptions about links between Melco and SJM.

“I have never worked with my father ever in our history. His finances are separate. In fact I compete with him on a daily basis in Macau. When James got the licence for Barangaroo, we were still in partnership,’’ he said.

“Perception is always an issue so whatever I have to do with the regulators I am happy to do it. It is going to be an extremely thorough probity review. But I am comfortable showing the fact that my father and I are different entities and I am certainly not an associate of his.”

But that didn’t stop the NSW Liquor & Gaming launching an inquiry tasked with examining whether the planned buyout of the Crown stake by Melco raised probity issues because the conditions of Crown’s licence for the $2.4bn Barangaroo project in Sydney banned any associations between Stanley Ho and his associates.

It followed revelations in the NSW parliament of alleged links between Melco and Stanley Ho’s web of companies. Melco even launched a legal challenge to the inquiry’s jurisdiction but failed.

Ho has since abandoned his Australian plans, in February walking way from buying his second tranche of shares from Packer and then in late April selling the 9.9 per cent holding he acquired in Crown last year to private equity giant Blackstone.

Despite the Blackstone transaction, the NSW gaming regulator has said it will push ahead with its Crown inquiry – neither Ho or Packer have yet been called to appear – which will still consider whether Crown management failed to notify ILGA as soon as it was aware last year of a change in shareholding involving an associate of Stanley Ho.

The inquiry is set to resume when it is safe to do so following the coronavirus pandemic and as the clock counts down to the opening of the Crown Sydney project at Barangaroo later this year.

Stanley Ho might now be gone, but even in death, he could still loom large over the city and country that long spurned him.