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I need to send him a few emails.
Australian media goes gaga after Kerry Packer blows bundle.
By DAVE BERNS
lasvegas.com Gaming WireFirst there was the tip, a brief mention that the Aussie whale had been in town for several days and lost about $20 million at Bellagio’s baccarat tables.
Then there was a July 17 item in the Review-Journal.
“Legendary gambler Kerry Packer was down about $20 million late last week at Bellagio, where he was playing baccarat,” it read.
A lot of money for sure, but this was Packer, Australia’s wealthiest man who has an estimated net worth of $4.6 billion and is a regular visitor to Las Vegas.
The anecdote was relegated to the forgotten news cycles of daily journalism before its resurrection in late August with a front page story in his homeland’s national newspaper, The Australian.
The piece detailed Packer’s estimated loss of about $34 million in his native currency.
It spoke of how he won a similar amount from MGM Grand in 1995 and detailed his reputation for being that biggest of Las Vegas tippers, a George.
Then, the national debate began Down Under.
Labor Party member Mark Latham, considered to be a maverick right-wing member of the Australian Parliament, ripped Packer’s love of gambling, just as lawmakers were debating the makeup of the country’s tax code.
“Notions of public morality and justice are under threat when it is possible for one person to accumulate such extraordinary wealth and then use it in such an extraordinary way,” Latham said, according to the Australian Financial Review.
One New York City tabloid, the New York Post, actually pegged Packer’s loss at somewhere between $65 million and $90 million. Not true, according to casino industry sources.
“If someone has enough money to blow $34 million at the casino, then they have enough money to pay more tax and help build a better society,” Latham continued.
Packer fired back.
He denied that his recent Las Vegas loss approached $20 million, although he acknowledged losses during his recent Las Vegas visit. Next he discussed the morality of gambling.
“When politicians start becoming moral judges on what people can spend their money on or not is, I think, something which sits better in a Stalinist state than in this country,” Packer said, according to the Australian Financial Review.
The media magnate went on to say that his losses were less than his donations to a Sydney children’s hospital.
“My motto basically is — never complain, never explain. I take risks which are for my own recreation, which sometimes work out and sometimes don’t.”
Enter Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who has publicly spoken of the social ills of gambling but chose to defend Packer’s right to gamble.
“I thought the Latham attack was ludicrous,” Howard said, noting that he believed it was driven by the legislator’s close relationship with a Packer media rival.
The prime minister continued.
“It is his money. He made the very legitimate point that he doesn’t gamble with his company’s money, and if you look at his corporate record that is right.”
North of the equator, the visit was viewed as one of the more lucrative for a casino operator in a free-spending string of desert getaways by whales who carry million-dollar credit lines and wager as much as $100,000-a-hand on blackjack and baccarat.
Depending on the source of the information, there are as few as 200 whales in the world or as many as a couple of thousand. Eighty percent are from Asia, where gambling is publicly taboo but privately acceptable.
Last year, Nevada casinos won $585 million from gamblers who played baccarat, a whale favorite, where they bet on who will come closer to nine — the house or the player.
Packer’s loss would have constituted a very lucrative 3 1/2 percent of that 1999 baccarat figure.
Meantime, Wall Street analysts upgraded their third-quarter earnings estimates for Bellagio’s parent company, MGM Mirage, with PaineWebber’s Robin Farley saying Packer’s losses could add as much as 7 cents a shares to the company’s earnings.
W.R. Hambrecht & Co.’s Jeff Logsdon said the boost would be closer to 6 cents a share, generating third-quarter earnings of about 38 cents for the Strip giant.
Most whales shy away from any publicity about their Las Vegas treks, and casino companies are predictably closed-mouthed about who’s gambling at their high roller tables at any given moment.
As a result, MGM Mirage executives have refused to publicly comment about reports of their Packer-initiated haul, a jaw-dropping loss that left several Aussie journalists wondering if their guy would return to Las Vegas in hopes of recouping his loss.
To hear casino hosts tell it, Packer’s poor luck increases the likelihood that he’ll return.
After all, they say, the same risk-taking gene that has made Packer one of the world’s wealthiest men also makes him one of Las Vegas’ biggest whales.
WoW – that wouldnt be just a whale – thad would be an entire POD! :bigsmile:
Yep, thats a whale allright. Hope he stops by my Baccarat site if he gets a longing for Vegas…:bigsmile:
Professor it’s interesting that the Banker you posted and Kerry are both from Australia … hummm.
:rolleyes:
