Muhammad Cohen

Category: casinos in Asia

  • Please follow me on Forbes.com

    I’ve begun to blog for Forbes.com about the casino business in Macau and around Asia, which I’ve been covering for nearly a decade, now as editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming. Please follow my blog and visit my site and posts early and often since Forbes.com pays by the click.

    If you are interested in the gaming business in Asia as an industry executive, player or investor, I hope you’ll find the blog pieces interesting. Even if you don’t care about gaming in Asia, I hope you’ll click to help me earn some money. Unlike playing in the casino, you can’t lose.

    I’ll still post some non-gaming items here, so please stay tuned. I know how busy our lives are and how crowded the online world has become, so I truly appreciate your attention and support. I hope you’ll keep taking your chances with me.

    Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes.com and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

  • Please follow me on Forbes.com

    I’ve begun to blog for Forbes.com about the casino business in Macau and around Asia, which I’ve been covering for nearly a decade, now as editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming. Please follow my blog and visit my site and posts early and often since Forbes.com pays by the click.

    If you are interested in the gaming business in Asia as an industry executive, player or investor, I hope you’ll find the blog pieces interesting. Even if you don’t care about gaming in Asia, I hope you’ll click to help me earn some money. Unlike playing in the casino, you can’t lose.

    I’ll still post some non-gaming items here, so please stay tuned. I know how busy our lives are and how crowded the online world has become, so I truly appreciate your attention and support. I hope you’ll keep taking your chances with me.

    Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes.com and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

  • Japan shuffles toward legal casinos

    The land of the rising sun is the land of rising hopes for the world’s casino industry. As I wrote in Whale hunting, Japan style (see page 86), the world’s third largest economy is the last great frontier for gaming, and virtually every casino company in the world wants to be in it. Macau casino companies keep upping the ante, with spending pledges for a Japan project reaching $5 billion.

    The article in the October issue of Macau Business points out there’s already a well-established market for gambling, including pachinko parlors with illegal payoff windows next door, Yakuza-run remote broadcast of live casino games from legal gaming jurisdictions, and the world’s most heavily bet horse racing.

    For years, Japanese politicians have said that it’s time to make casinos legal, most notably Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who promised to push for casino legalization during his previous, truncated term succeeding Junichiro Koizumi in 2006. Last week, his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) introduced casino legislation, and the long anticipated bill is widely expected to pass. This time, casinos are packaged as part of Abenomics, the prime minister’s plan to reform Japan’s economy and lift it out of its quarter century long doldrums.

    The draft casino bill outlines a multilayered process for bringing casinos to Japan. The national bureaucracy will draft the rules, while local governments weigh whether they want casinos in their jurisdictions. Against the promise of investment, jobs and (mainly domestic) tourists, there’s the perception of gambling as a seedy activity, embodied by pachinko parlors with their legacy of money laundering, drugs and bribery. Japan’s National Police oppose casino legalization, along with some civic organizations, Buddhist groups and fringe opposition parties.

    Gambling also has a reputation for government boondoggles, embodied in overbuilt publicly funded speedboat race courses and overstaffing at horse tracks. A government sponsored theme park construction initiative, with similar goals to casino development, fizzled into a puddle of wasted public money.

    Mix in Japan’s inherent social conservatism, and, despite politicians’ support, casinos face an uphill fight. The seven year tease for the world’s casino companies may be over soon, or it may have only just begun.

    Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

  • Casino billionaires risk all in brawl

    When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled, according to an Asian proverb. Most animals know how far to take a confrontation without lasting consequences, but occasionally, one or both elephants gets gored.

    For more than a year, Wynn Resorts chairman and CEO Steve Wynn and Kazuo Okada, his one-time largest shareholder and key financier, have dueled publicly. Last week, Wynn shareholders voted to remove Okada from the company board of directors, a day after Okada, the chairman of Japan’s largest pachinko machine maker, resigned amid leveling a blistering attack on Wynn.

    Behind the boardroom drama, billionaire casino developers Wynn and Okada have traded allegations of numerous shady dealings in Macau and Manila. Bribery accusations, in dollar amounts ranging from the hundreds to the hundreds of millions, figure prominently in their charges. As I wrote in Asia Times, inviting regulators to scrutinize the casino business is a risky bet. That’s especially true in this confrontation, where neither elephant seems inclined to back off.

    Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

  • Macau casino revenue numbers hide real news

    Over the past few months, Macau casino revenues have disappointed. October’s new revenue record of MOP27.7 billion (US$3.46 billion), while welcome, represented a modest 3.2 percent increase over revenue a year ago. But behind the numbers, key changes are taking place that will transform Macau.

    After years of increasing domination by VIP players provided by junket operators, for about a year mass market gamblers have been driving revenue growth. As I wrote in the October issue of Macau Business, the trend will show its biggest impact beyond the casino floor.

    A related trend is the swing toward Cotai, covered in the July issue of Macau Business. Three casino operators already have resorts in Cotai, the entertainment area built on landfill between Macau’s outer islands, and this year the government has approved development applications from the other three. By the end of 2017, there will be at least six new developments in Cotai, built for some US$15 billion.

    Things will surely be different by then. But Macau’s shakeup has already begun, with its effect felt as far away as Beijing and Wall Street.

    Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.