Stanley Ho family feud flares again

Billionaire Pansy Ho is again moving to take control of Macau casino operator SJM Holdings, the legacy of her father Stanley Ho’s casino monopoly. That puts Pansy Ho in direct conflict with her father’s fourth wife and SJM managing director Angela Leong.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes, editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

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Macau casino revenue fall ‘not THAT bad’

JPMorgan analyst DS Kim says Macau’s 5% fall in casino revenue in January was “not THAT bad,” and he’s right for several reasons.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes, editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

Investors misunderstand Macau transition

Every year, I make forecasts about Asian gaming for the year ahead. For 2019, I’m offering predictions about Macau, Japan, online gaming, Korea and Vietnam. And as the year wraps up, I check the accuracy of those forecasts.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes, editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

Old Macau thinking rules casino license expiry

The Macau government won’t say what will happen with casino concessions expiring in 2020. That’s one reason casino shares are tanking.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes, editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

HKZM Bridge: Macau’s missing link for MICE?

The new bridge makes Macau easy to reach from Hong Kong airport. That could unlock the global casino capital’s potential for MICE: meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes, editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

Fatima Bhutto can’t avoid politics

When she came to the Ubud Writers Festival, Pakistani writer Fatima Bhutto said she wouldn’t discuss politics or her family’s tragic political dynasty, just her new novel, The Runaways. But the novel, like Bhutto, is unavoidably steeped in politics.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes, editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

Moving US-North Korea relations ahead to 1994

Acclaimed foreign correspondent Barbara Demick believes the Clinton administration got it “most right” with North Korea on nuclear weapons. If the Trump administration is lucky, it can get US-North Korea relations back to where they stood a quarter century ago.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes, editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

Jeju Dream Tower gambles on ‘Korean lifestyle’

Korea’s Lotte Tour is building a US$1.4 billion iconic urban integrated resort highlighting “modern Korean lifestyle” on Jeju island, just 10 minutes from the airport, offering visa-free entry for mainland Chinese. The trick is to get Jeju’s vast majority of Korean visitors, barred from the casino, to become customers of the 38 story twin towers featuring Asia’s largest Grand Hyatt and Korea’s largest pool deck.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes, editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

Bali helps Anuradha Roy pen pan-Hindu parable

On her first visit to the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, Indian novelist Anuradha Roy discovered Bali’s expatriate painter laureate Walter Spies. This year Roy returned to Ubud with All the Lives We Never Lived, a parable for modern India featuring Spies and Nobel Prize winning poet Rabindranath Tagore as key characters.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes, editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.

Bush 41 bears twin albatross of Willie Horton, Clarence Thomas plus all they wrought

His blue blood roots and reputation for decency aside, George Bush greatly advanced hypocrisy, race baiting and cynicism in US politics, fertilizing the ground for his presidentially illegitimate son’s unconscionable invasion of Iraq and the current White House occupant’s brand of outright lies and division.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes, editor at large for Inside Asian Gaming and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.