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Now Taubman's Bullish on Macau
By Ian Cooper
For the longest time, one of America’s largest shopping-mall developers, Taubman Centers, wasn’t as enthused about stampeding into the new casino boomtown of Macau, thinking the area was being overly bombarded with development. But that was then. As of last month, Taubman broke ground in a joint-venture casino resort project, which will include 750,000 sq. ft. of retail space, according to Business Week.
The article reveals that Morgan Parker, president of Taubman Asia Limited, “dismisses a common argument that the Chinese gamblers who are filling up the casinos are only interested in betting and won't shop. He said they aren't hitting the malls now because there are no quality shopping centers in Macau now.”
Macau is the next gambling Mecca of the world. This is the new area where “what happens here, stays here.” Even better for the region, the unemployment rate at the close of 2006 was 3.5% as compared to the 4% posted for 2005, according to Macau’s Statistics and Census Bureau. Most of that improvement is thanks to the large numbers of jobs now available in gaming, hotel and restaurant sectors, which are strengthened by substantial visitor growth to the region.
Better still, Macau, which just dethroned Las Vegas as the world’s gambling capital, could double its revenue to $14 billion by the time 2010 rolls around. That’s huge. This is an ever-expanding region with 1.3 billion people living within a three-hour flight of Macau and another 100 million people living within a radius of a three-hour drive, according to Macau Business News.
Take care,
Ian L. Cooper, Editor, Early Alert Trader