Las Vegas Sands plans to slash the equivalent of 3,000 to 4,000 more full-time jobs in Macau and Hong Kong by September, executives say.
The owner of the Venetian and Sands casinos in Macau aimed to cut payroll via a combination of layoffs, pay cuts, attrition and transfers of staff to the company's soon-to-open Singapore resort, Asia-region president Stephen Weaver said yesterday.
'We've been looking at staffing levels across our properties in Las Vegas, Macau and Singapore, and the bottom line is that this is part of an ongoing process to reduce costs.'
The staff reductions are part of a US$270 million annual Macau cost-cutting exercise. Las Vegas Sands revealed the measures last week after reporting a net loss of US$87.68 million for the first three months of the year. The cuts are deeper than the US$125 million in reduced Macau expenses that the company had announced in February. The measures are part of a campaign to maintain compliance with leverage requirements built into agreements on a total of US$10.27 billion in long-term debt as of March.
'We will continue to align our headcount with the current rather than future needs of our business,' new president and chief operating officer Michael Leven said last week.
The full-time headcount in Macau would be slashed to between 13,000 and 14,000 by September, down from about 17,500 at present and a peak of 20,000 last year, Mr Leven told Bloomberg yesterday.