MGM Grand

MGM Mirage Inc. opened a 600-room, Las Vegas-style resort in Macau yesterday with a celebration including fireworks and traditional dancers, raising the stakes in a Chinese gambling haven increasingly crowded by global players.

The $1.25-billion (U.S.) MGM Grand Macau, a joint venture between MGM and Pansy Ho, daughter of Macau gambling mogul and one-time gaming monopoly holder Stanley Ho, is a relative latecomer to the once sleepy former Portuguese enclave, following Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Wynn Resorts Ltd.

MGM MIRAGE becomes the latest gaming giant to try and lure the Chinese gambler on Tuesday, when the company opens its first casino resort outside the United States in the tiny enclave of Macau.

MGM Grand Macau is a $US1.25 billion ($1.45 billion) casino resort half-owned by MGM Mirage and half by Pansy Ho, daughter of the original Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho.

Its owners are desperate to tap the players flooding into the former Portuguese colony, in what is rapidly becoming the world's most lucrative betting centre.

HONG KONG: MGM Mirage, the world's second largest casino operator, and the daughter of billionaire Stanley Ho are betting their Macau venture will grab a slice of the VIP market, which nets about two-thirds of the Chinese city's gambling revenue.

The US$1.25bil, 600-room MGM Grand Macau casino, due to open on Dec 18, would benefit from its position on the waterfront in Macau's city centre, near established VIP venues Wynn Macau, Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd's StarWorld and her father's Grand Lisboa, Pansy Ho told reporters at a briefing in the southern Chinese city yesterday.