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Adelson Ready to Settle With ‘Unreasonable’ Singapore Law Group
June 23, 2010, 12:16 AM EDT
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman Sheldon Adelson said his Singapore casino is ready to settle “any day they want” with the lawyers group that accused it of using their conference to hasten its gaming license.
“We much rather make love than war,” Adelson said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Singapore. “We tried to settle with them, they didn’t want to and were quite unreasonable.”
Marina Bay Sands sued the lawyers after they withheld payment for the first conference it hosted. IPBA 2010 Pte, on behalf of the Tokyo-based Inter-Pacific Bar Association conference, countersued the resort for misrepresenting a “complete disaster” as a world-class venue. Sands used the attendance of Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew at the event to speed up its casino and occupation permits, according to the lawsuit.
“People should know that there will be little glitches in an opening of a new property,” said Adelson, 77, who’s in Singapore for the grand opening of the casino resort today. “They couldn’t stand even one glitch.”
Delegates at the conference complained of unfinished rooms, power failures, closed facilities and lost luggage, and the Bar Association’s annual general meeting discussed an ‘unprecedented’ motion empowering it to sue Sands, according to IPBA’s lawsuit.
Yap Wai Ming, chairman of the organizing committee for the IPBA, said that Marina Bay Sands never responded to a request for proposals to mitigate the losses that the lawyers suffered.
“They chose to sue us instead,” he said June 10.
Returned Checks
“We never would have sued them if they didn’t return the checks,” said Adelson, who opened parts of the $5.5 billion resort on April 27 after delaying a scheduled end-of-year debut.
“I don’t know about in Singapore but in the U.S. it’s a criminal offence to return a check or to write a check that you don’t intend to cover,” he said.
Sands halted projects in Macau and Las Vegas during the 2008 financial crisis and focused on the Singapore complex. Singapore lifted a four-decade ban on casinos in 2005 to help attract 17 million visitors and collect annual tourism revenue of S$30 billion by 2015.
“Now believe me, we make every effort,” Adelson said. “We send employees in to live in the rooms, to try out the toilets, sinks, lights, drapes, to make sure everything is working as it’s supposed to and that’s what we did.
“But in any new property and in any ongoing property, you always have something that happens.”
Las Vegas Sands closed down 3.7 percent yesterday at $26.04 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The S&P 500 index was down 1.6 percent.
The case is Marina Bay Sands Pte Ltd. vs IPBA 2010 Singapore Pte Ltd. S348/2010 in the Singapore High Court.
Adelson Ready to Settle With ‘Unreasonable’ Singapore Law Group
June 23, 2010, 12:16 AM EDT
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman Sheldon Adelson said his Singapore casino is ready to settle “any day they want” with the lawyers group that accused it of using their conference to hasten its gaming license.
“We much rather make love than war,” Adelson said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Singapore. “We tried to settle with them, they didn’t want to and were quite unreasonable.”
Marina Bay Sands sued the lawyers after they withheld payment for the first conference it hosted. IPBA 2010 Pte, on behalf of the Tokyo-based Inter-Pacific Bar Association conference, countersued the resort for misrepresenting a “complete disaster” as a world-class venue. Sands used the attendance of Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew at the event to speed up its casino and occupation permits, according to the lawsuit.
“People should know that there will be little glitches in an opening of a new property,” said Adelson, 77, who’s in Singapore for the grand opening of the casino resort today. “They couldn’t stand even one glitch.”
Delegates at the conference complained of unfinished rooms, power failures, closed facilities and lost luggage, and the Bar Association’s annual general meeting discussed an ‘unprecedented’ motion empowering it to sue Sands, according to IPBA’s lawsuit.
Yap Wai Ming, chairman of the organizing committee for the IPBA, said that Marina Bay Sands never responded to a request for proposals to mitigate the losses that the lawyers suffered.
“They chose to sue us instead,” he said June 10.
Returned Checks
“We never would have sued them if they didn’t return the checks,” said Adelson, who opened parts of the $5.5 billion resort on April 27 after delaying a scheduled end-of-year debut.
“I don’t know about in Singapore but in the U.S. it’s a criminal offence to return a check or to write a check that you don’t intend to cover,” he said.
Sands halted projects in Macau and Las Vegas during the 2008 financial crisis and focused on the Singapore complex. Singapore lifted a four-decade ban on casinos in 2005 to help attract 17 million visitors and collect annual tourism revenue of S$30 billion by 2015.
“Now believe me, we make every effort,” Adelson said. “We send employees in to live in the rooms, to try out the toilets, sinks, lights, drapes, to make sure everything is working as it’s supposed to and that’s what we did.
“But in any new property and in any ongoing property, you always have something that happens.”
Las Vegas Sands closed down 3.7 percent yesterday at $26.04 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The S&P 500 index was down 1.6 percent.
The case is Marina Bay Sands Pte Ltd. vs IPBA 2010 Singapore Pte Ltd. S348/2010 in the Singapore High Court.
