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Hazel Parry

The glitzy new Grand Lisboa casino in Macau has been criticised as looking like a cockroach sitting on an egg, but to Frank McFadden, president of Joint Ventures and Business Developments at Sociedade De Jogos De Macau, it is comparable to a work of art.

For every artist there are 10 critics. I am sure someone said scathing things about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. What can you say? If someone criticises the Grand Lisboa, they are obviously applying their own values to it. But it has been designed by Chinese people for the Chinese market.

The inspiration behind the building is the Faberge egg. There are great vistas, giant screens and live entertainment on the gaming floor. There is great height so there is ambient noise. The restaurants are on balconies that overlook the gaming floor, so it is a very interactive, stimulating and dynamic environment.

We've had a great response. In the first couple of days we clocked up 90,000 visitors, which is good, but we really won't know how successful we are for about three or four months.

Everyone's been a little bit surprised by the Grand Lisboa. If you have a 40-year monopoly and this is the first genuine new product on the market, people expect it to have some legacy from the past. In fact, what we have built is the antithesis of previous or current products.

I also think people underestimated the quality of the product. But one thing you cannot compromise on is quality. If you have a poor quality product you will soon become obsolete within the market because there is so much that is new in Macau.

I took Steve Wynn around before the opening and he was very complimentary. He said it was very exciting and thinks it will be successful, and he congratulated us on our efforts.

It is close to the Wynn Macau and the [original] Lisboa, but that's not a bad thing. In many ways it is very good, not only from a commercial point of view, but in redefining your own standards every day.

When you get a lot of properties together you get critical mass, as you do in Lan Kwai Fong and with the restaurants in Kowloon. People can bounce around from one to the other. The hub concept works well in entertainment.

The great thing about Macau is that so much is new. Other market segments outside of Macau are looking at reducing costs and becoming more efficient, and here we are looking at building and maximising and developing people. It is a very positive place to be at the moment.

I think you'll still find most of the gaming customers are mainland Chinese. But the product is evolving. A lot of Macau's new customers are what we call mass market, mainstream customers who are looking to be entertained and to gamble as well. There will always be a place for the VIP business, but the indicators are that the growth is in the mass market.

If you look at China, you have the highest savings ratio, I think, in the world. You've got an increasingly growing urban, sophisticated middle class who are being educated towards consumerism. As part of its economic policies, the government is encouraging people to take time off, travel within China and spend money so consumerism can support its industrial boom.

All these factors are conducive to Macau, which has the only gaming franchise in mainland China.

Because of that positive macroeconomic market, plus all the infrastructure going on in the Pearl River Delta and Macau, I can see double-digit growth in gross gaming revenues for the next three to five years.

How long will the growth continue? If you look at forward planning, everyone has these equity spends. They need a return on investment and capital. If that return shrinks, people will be far more circumspect about their investment plans. In the end the market will decide.

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