With Chow Tai Fook Enterprises on board as the prospective buyer, Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie said Baha Mar will begin opening in the second quarter of next year.
Christie told a meeting of the Bahamas Hotel Association the Hong Kong-based conglomerate would begin “a phased opening” of the unfinished US$3.5 billion megaresort in April, consisting of 700 of the property’s 1,800 planned hotel rooms.
CTFE plans to invest $200 million on the opening and on final revisions to the construction, he said, and will hire 1,500 staff in the new year and as many as 4,300 by the end of 2017.
“These operations will almost immediately begin to have a positive economic impact,” Christie reportedly said.
Chow Tai Fook, which also is looking to add resort gaming in Australia and Vietnam to its sprawling global portfolio, confirmed in October that it was in negotiations to take over Baha Mar by acquiring a company called Perfect Luck Assets, an entity created by China Export-Import Bank, the resort’s principal lender, to facilitate a sale.
No purchase price has been disclosed, but CTFE has submitted a formal plan to the government that includes a short list of potential operators for the resort’s casino. Those names haven’t been released either.
The Bahamas Tribune quoted Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe as saying that Baha Mar would feature “the largest single-floor casino in the Caribbean.”
Wilchcombe was among a contingent of Bahamas officials who traveled to Hong Kong earlier this month for direct talks with CTFE. The trip included a visit to Macau, where CTFE has come under fire by opponents in the Bahamas over its investment in the company that holds a majority stake in SJM Holdings, the publicly traded casino operator founded by Hong Kong billionaire Stanley Ho. Ho held a monopoly on gaming in Macau for four decades and over the years has been linked by international law enforcement agencies to organized crime groups in Asia. The tycoon, now 95 years old and ailing, has never been charged with any crime, and it’s believed he’s no longer involved in SJM’s management, although he is still nominally its chairman. CTFE characterizes its relationship with SJM as an arm’s length investment that doesn’t involve the company in gaming in the Chinese territory.
Wilchcombe said his government is conducting due diligence on CTFE that would include reaching out to “chairmen of the various gaming boards in our industry”. He also said the Bahamian opposition amounts to “much to do about nothing”.
