Casino giant Wynn suffers top-level jolt as boss of just-opened US$4 billion Macau casino resort quits
Shares in Steve Wynn’s gaming empire slump as industry watchers predict a further spending slow-down around a landmark visit of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang later this month
Hopes that Macau’s gaming industry was on the brink of a mass-market-led revival have taken a fresh hit after the man in charge of one of its most costly and high-profile casino resorts quit just five weeks after it opened.
Gamal Abdelaziz resigned as president and executive director of Wynn Macau Ltd on Friday “in order to pursue other opportunities”, the casino firm said in a Hong Kong Stock Exchange filing.
Abdelaziz – who is widely known as Gamal Aziz – was in charge of operations at the luxury US$4.2 billion Wynn Palace hotel-casino resort on the Cotai Strip, which opened on August 22 this year.
He will be replaced by Ian Coughlan, who was previously in charge of the company’s Wynn Macau resort. Coughlan now will be responsible for the entire operation and development of both the Wynn Macau and Wynn Palace resorts.
The top-level departure sent Wynn shares tumbling and suggests that the US gaming giant – whose Macau operations have been geared principally to VIP and premium players – has found the switch to mass-market gaming difficult as the world’s richest gaming destination attempts to clean-up and re-engineer the industry it has relied on almost exclusively for decades and diversify into other economic areas.
It comes just days before Premier Li Keqiang visits the city for the fifth Macau Forum – a major conference on economic and trade co-operation between China and the world’s Portuguese-speaking nations due to be held on October 11 and 12.