Macau Junket Meltdown Could Leave Thousands Jobless
Macau’s Labor Affaires Bureau (DSAL) on Mon opened a special living tabulator for workers wedged by the cloture of Suncity’s junket operations inwards the play hub.
The world’s biggest junket operator on Fri announced the straightaway ending of Suncity Gaming Promotion Company Ltd (SGPC), which formerly unionized trips for predominantly Chinese VIP gamblers to the casinos of Macau and elsewhere.
The make a motion was widely anticipated. It followed the arrest by Macau authorities later(a) Nov of Suncity chairman and CEO Alvin Chau, and others, on charges of organizing offshore online play that illicitly targeted the play enclave and the mainland.
Just years earlier, prosecutors in Wenzhou, China issued an stop warrant for Chau on charges of facilitating cross-border gambling.
Last week, Macau gaming regulator DICJ told the junkets to kibosh lending money to VIP clients, eviscerating their business concern model.
Obligation to Workers
The upthrust inwards the junket sector could impact thousands of workers direct employed by Macau’s 80-odd licensed junket companies.
Last hebdomad DSAL reminded the junkets they had “the obligation to protect the fag rights of employees.”
An official DSAL source who spoke to The Macau Daily Post said it was unclear how many ex-SGPC employees would seek help. The source said the heel counter would remain unresolved as long as workers required DSAL assistance in finding young jobs.
‘Sun Superstars’
It’s non solve how many people SGPC employed inwards Macau. In 2019, the Suncity Group said it had grown its workforce the previous twelvemonth by 23.5 percent, to 4,574 people, set in seven regions around the globe.
At the time, it operated VIP clubs in Macau, capital of the Philippines inward the Philippines, Melbourne and Sydney inward Australia, Incheon inward South Korea, Phnom Penh inwards Cambodia, and Danang in Vietnam.
In February, Inside Asiatic Gaming reported the company’s yearbook staff company welcomed around 2,200 team members, who were feted as “Sun Superstars.”
But this was the Suncity Group as a whole, of which SGPC was one, albeit crucial, subsidiary.
Chau transformed the companion o'er 14 years from a little junket surgical operation with I VIP tabularize at Macau’s Starworld holiday resort into a straggling empire with interests inward everything from existent land to holiday resort development and moving picture production.
At its height, it controled 17 VIP rooms inwards Macau and was responsible for up to a tertiary of the play hub’s revenue gaming revenue, equating to several billions of dollars.
$40M Loan Default
To supply to its woes, it emerged Mon that Suncity Group could human face a basal vary inwards its ownership complex body part if it fails to pass water a US$40.2 billion payment to a mob of lenders.
According to a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a companionship controled past Chau took come out the loan finally July, pledging 4.99 million of his shares inwards Suncity Group Holdings, some 70 percent of the company, as a guarantee.
The lenders say the loan is currently inwards nonpayment and that Suncity has until Midweek to piss the payment. If it doesn’t, the lenders could take in hold of the group.