Sands China drops search for CEO

Sands China plans to keep Edward Tracy as President and David Sisk as Vice President, dropping the search for a new CEO, said Michael Leven.

 Sands China will indeed hire someone who can manage government relations, the company’s acting CEO said. “The person would have some government experience,” Leven added, without disclosing further details.

According to the executive, the local gaming operator has now “the best management team” it ever had.

Regarding plots 7 and 8 on Cotai, the company is waiting to see what comes out from the appeal. “We appealed because essentially we would like to protect our rights since we invested some money there. I don’t know how it’s going to be resolved, and that could take a long time,” Leven said.

A non-gaming facility on those parcels would “actually help generate more traffic to plots 5 and 6,” he stressed.

However, for now the company is not planning new projects, at least until it gets the guarantee from the local government that it will get the permission to hire construction workers and operating people.

“I don’t think that we are prepared to make any commitment to build anything else until we know we are going to have the people.” The company is also hoping to get approval to sell its Four Seasons apartment-hotel under a co-op scheme in the first quarter of this year.

Even if Sands China gets the permission soon, it will still take “about four, five or six months” to complete the sale. “Maybe by the end of the year we’ll start selling them.”

The company also expects to open half of the Shangri-La and Traders, on plots 5 and 6, by the end of the year. Then in May next year it will open half of the Sheraton. “By September we would finish the Shangri-La and Traders and the first tower of Sheraton, and in 2013 the second Sheraton tower,” Leven explained.