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MACAU BUSINESS


More than seven years after the opening of Sands Macao, what would you do differently in Macau? I would do exactly what I have done. There is


not much I would do different. I mean, business wise.


I might have built several places at once


but we were doing other properties: we were building Singapore, we were building the Palazzo [Las Vegas]. We were building too much. Yes, I would have done several places


simultaneously [in Macau]. I would have gone ahead and done [parcels] five and six, then I would have started seven and eight and have [site] three finished. [Originally] I was going to do them in sequence. For instance, I would finish the pilings in one property and then I would move the equipment and the crew to the next lot and so on. But with the recession, my crew could not handle it. It was too much for us to build.


Jacobs caused ‘hurt’


The judicial saga with former Sands China Ltd. chief executive officer Steve Jacobs created a lot of noise around the company in Macau. Is it possible for you to measure the negative impact created by the case? I am too trusting of people and I did not think somebody was that malicious to go out of his way to do criminal things. I cannot measure it but it certainly caused us a lot of hurt.


When the people went to make a settlement with him and to fire him, the first thing he did was to threaten us. Once threatened, we could not make any deal. These were very honest members, very


outstanding members of the board. Once he threatened that he was going to make up stories and he had evidence, they could not capitulate to his demands. He made a bed for himself.


The image I have of you is that you are


always ready for a fight… I am not ready for a fight. I do not want to fight but we are ready to defend ourselves against improper and untruthful allegations. He did it very cleverly. He went to court. In the United States, anything that is said in court is protected from liable or slander or any claim against untruth. In Macau it is not. In the rest of the world it is not. So he brought in the press to watch what he filed. I am sure he gave them copies. When we win the case, we will go after him in


a way that he won’t forget because none of what he says is true and he can’t prove it.


You were one of the first people to think


of a way to expand into Hengqin Island, next to Macau, to host some of your non-gaming projects. Years later, the island will be developed by the Macau and Zhuhai governments, and some private businesses. You are not there. What went wrong? I do not think it went wrong. My former management was enthused about it and I was not that enthused because we were a simple real estate development. From my point of view, they needed my


convention expertise to develop and operate a big convention centre. We were discouraged because we were told that the central government did not want any casino operators operating on Hengqin Island, even if it was non-gaming. As it turned out, that was not the case. But that was not what we understood at the time, so we passed.


Still, it is just the beginning and the island is six times bigger than Macau. If the opportunity comes, would you think about it? We are only in the business of doing


integrated resorts. We are not going to get into any other business.


Business aside, here you are now, among


the wealthiest people in the world. I am sure many are asking themselves: “With all these


billions, why doesn’t he stop? How much is enough?” It is not just an issue of money, is it? What drives you? Accomplishment. To accomplish things that other people cannot do and to change the way other people do things.


Looking back, what makes your heart beat


faster with pride and what saddens you? This morning we were talking about the


joblessness [in the U.S.] and the sad part of people who are out of work. One of my colleagues said he got 17 calls in one day from people looking for jobs. That really makes me feel sad because I


remember my parents who were both uneducated and my father had a lot of difficulties in getting a good job. I remember the sad times when there was no money. They had to borrow money from moneylenders, from shylocks, to put food on the table. What makes me proud are all the accomplishments. The biggest accomplishment that I have and that makes me the proudest has to do with medical research. I have changed the status quo of medical


research because of my new “business model”. It is not business. It is a research model of conducting collaborative medical research [through the Dr Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation]. Did you know that we opened a drug


treatment centre in Macau? We have a clinic there. It is a labour of love from my wife. She is a doctor of internal medicine and she developed a subspecialty in treating drug addicts. We have one in Israel, in Tel Aviv, where my wife comes from, and we have one here in Las Vegas. My wife has sent, many times, doctors,


nurses and medical people from both clinics over to Macau. Now they have a couple of hundred patients and they are doing an excellent job and sharing treatment research, which is published in medical publications.


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