Wynn Macau Ltd. fell the most in over two years of Hong Kong trading, leading to declines among operators of China’s only legal casinos, amid concerns that a reported crackdown on illegal money transfers will pare demand.
Shares of Wynn Resorts Ltd. slumped 8.5 percent, its biggest decline since October 2011, as of the close of trading in Hong Kong. MGM Holdings Ltd. dropped 8.2 percent, while Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. fell 7.6 percent.
Macau police have seized China UnionPay Co. mobile card-payment devices that were being used illegally to circumvent currency controls.
A Judiciary Police spokesperson yesterday confirmed that the cases occurred “in recent months.” One of the latest cases occurred in March and was reported by the Times. According to the MP, both suspects in that case were involved in organized crime. They would request several POS (point-of-sale) terminals in mainland China and then send them to Macau by post, thus avoiding the UnionPay network due to the assumption that the transactions were being processed in mainland China. But in reality, they were withdrawing money for their clients, from whom they received the normal transaction-processing fee of 0.2 percent. This group was active in Macau for six months.
Tourists from mainland China can legally bring 20,000 yuan (USD3,200) into Macau, and withdraw as much as 10,000 yuan a day at cash machines with each card they have. To skirt the limits, visitors can buy goods at a pawnshop using debit cards such as UnionPay and trade them in for the local currency at the same store. Pawnshops also lend local currency to gamblers.
The use of mobile card-swiping machines to provide visiting gamblers with local currency has caused the pawnbroking business to slump. As MDT reported on Wednesday, the Macau General Chamber of Pawnbrokers has urged the government to “tighten control over the use of POS terminals from mainland China.” In a statement, the association recalled that over the past three years, non-Macau registered POS machines, which are normally used for a wide range of payments, have been “savagely” used for “illegal card spending transactions for mainland tourists.”
The Macau General Chamber of Pawnbrokers stressed that such illegal actions are damaging “our members’ normal operation” and are also “disrupting Macau’s finance system.” This is especially because those behind such activities are also co-operating with other “companies” or “banks” that [have] never acquired the Macau government’s authorization.”
“They settle the bills in the mainland,” they added.
“Investors are now very jittery about all this negative press,” Grant Govertsen, a Macau-based analyst at Union Gaming Group, said by phone to Bloomberg yesterday.
China UnionPay said it is implementing risk prevention measures while working with regulators and law enforcement personnel to share information. The state-backed debit card company and its international unit were unavailable at press time.
Wendy Wong, a spokeswoman at Macau’s gaming regulator, and Daniel Tang, a spokesman at Macau’s Financial Intelligence Office, a government unit that monitors and probes financial crimes, were also unavailable at the time of writing.
China is cracking down on the use of hand-held card-swipers within casino resorts amid concerns that tens of billions of yuan in illicit funds are being taken out of the mainland and into Macau.
Funds obtained illegally through card-swiping come to an estimated USD6 billion, or about 12 percent of Macau’s annual mass-market chips purchased, Karen Tang, an analyst at Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong, wrote yesterday in a note to clients. A decline of that size would pare earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the six largest casino operators in Macau by 2 percent to 6 percent, with Melco Crown and MGM China affected the worst, she wrote.
Stocks in Sands China Ltd. dropped 4.6 percent yesterday, while SJM Holdings Ltd. declined 6.6 percent and MGM China Holdings Ltd. sank 8.2 percent. The Hang Seng Index rose 0.4 percent as of the close of trading in Hong Kong.
Macau may face a visa crackdown and Macau’s Secretariat for Security indicated tightening measures could be introduced during July, Govertsen and Felicity Chiang − Union Gaming analysts − wrote in a research note this week.
State-owned China Central Television reported over the weekend that Macau visitors who didn’t travel on to a third-
party country could receive a special stamp on their passport, which could make future visa applications more difficult, according to Union Gaming.
“Judging from past experience, it’s often all bark and no bite,” Govertsen said. “The shortening of a visitor’s stay or the stricter use of cash cards won’t necessarily curb the gamblers’ capacity to gamble.” MDT/Agencies
Лучшие стройматериалы и информация о них
