The company owns and operates The Star Sydney,The Star Gold Coast and Treasury Brisbane which boast hotels,restaurants,bars,theatres and other entertainment facilities. The latter’s licence is set to transfer to the Queen’s Wharf casino and resort when it opensin the second half of 2023.
Chairman Ben Heap issued a mea culpa to shareholders last month,pleading for a chance to demonstrate the embattled casino giant was ready to turn over a new leaf following the damning results of the Bell and Gotterson inquiries into the group’s suitability to hold its coveted casino licences.
But is it all too little too late,or will shareholders rally around the tainted stock?
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How it started:Tabcorp Holdings split its casino and wagering operations in 2011 which saw the creation of casino giant Echo Entertainment. Echo owned Sydney’s Pyrmont casino,Treasury in Brisbane and Jupiters in the Sunshine Coast before rebranding as The Star Entertainment Group in 2015 as part of a $1 billion revamp. The Star also secured the rights to open a new Brisbane casino at Queens Wharf in the same year,under a consortium with Chow Tai Fook Enterprises and Far East Consortium.
How it’s going:Although The Star has a path to suitability in NSW,the jury’s still out in Queensland. It’s not yet clear whether freshly minted chief executive Robbie Cooke will be able to complete the needed cultural overhaul across the group,although the NSW regulator seems to think so.
Cooke celebrated his first day shuffling from one media interview to the next last week when the NSW casino regulator announced the group would lose the right to operate its Sydney casino,implemented an independent manager and ordered it to pay a record fine of $100 million.