James Packer slips down Forbes list

The eagerly awaited annual list of the world’s most powerful people was published on Monday, and it pegs Packer as only the tenth richest person in Australia, thanks to a rotten year for Crown Resorts.

That’s down from a high of $8.6 billion in 2014 when he was, according to the financial news portal, the second richest person in Australia.

Forbes’ Billionaires List 2017 is a snapshot of the world’s wealthiest, taken exactly on February 17, 2017, and compiled by a team of hundreds of financial analysts, using stock prices and exchange rates from around the world to calculate net worths.

Timing Off

In 2014, Packer’s investments in Macau and ambitions to expand into Las Vegas and beyond suggested his net worth was about to rocket heavenwards.

Macau was, that year, described by Forbes as “one of the world’s fastest growing economies” and the region’s casinos were enjoying bi-monthly revenues equal to that of Vegas’ annual haul.

But an unprecedented crackdown on corruption and money laundering by President Xi Jinping’s government on the Chinese mainland halted the success story and sent revenues tumbling.

Packer’s Asian expansion ambitions came at the wrong time, and the arrest of 14 Crown employees by Chinese authorities last October on suspicion of marketing the company’s services to VIPs the Chinese mainland, where gambling is illegal, was the final nail in the coffin.

Crown Resorts made a dramatic U-turn on its global expansion strategy in December, suddenly and unexpectedly selling in Macau and ditching its stake in the Alon project in Vegas in order to concentrate on projects closer to home.

Sheldon is Number One

But, again, this timing may have been wrong. Macau is bouncing back and that’s also reflected in the Forbes Billionaires List.

Sheldon Adelson, the founder, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp, invested heavily in Macau when the Ho gambling monopoly ended in 2002. Adelson helped to transform Macau and Macau, in turn, transformed Adelson from a mere casino tycoon to a towering casino plutocrat.

But Adelson’s net worth, so intrinsically linked to Macau, is back up from a dip last year, according to Forbes. He is currently the 20th richest person on the planet and by far the wealthiest gambling operator in the world.

Do billionaires care about where they appear in Forbes’ list? You know, we bet they do. And Packer must have been inspired by Adelson’s story to go so heavily into Macau when the going seemed good. For the former second-richest person in Australia to get his timing wrong has got to sting a little.

Still, there’s always next year.