Genting Singapore confirms withdrawal from Osaka IR race

KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 18): Genting Bhd's 52.7%-owned subsidiary Genting Singapore Ltd confirmed that it will not continue with its participation in the planned Osaka integrated resort (IR) in Japan after considering shareholders' opinion.

"After careful consideration of the opinions of many shareholders, we regret that we will not continue our participation in the Osaka IR project going forward.

“In the future, Genting Singapore will focus on participating in the Yokohama IR request for concept (RFC), which is currently underway,” Genting Singapore said in a statement, which was reproduced on Casino.org's website.

Casino.org reported yesterday that it was once a three-horse race to build the IR in Osaka. But now, MGM Resorts International and local partner Orix are the last competitors standing.

It was reported that officials from Osaka confirmed that the MGM-Orix consortium was the only one to participate in the request for proposal (RFP) process.

"Last week, reports circulated confirming what many already knew — that MGM was viewed as the leader in a group also consisting of Galaxy Entertainment and Genting Singapore. Soon thereafter, it was revealed that the Las Vegas-based operator and Orix were the only party to submit a bid in Osaka’s RFP round," Casino.org reported.

It was reported that Galaxy confirmed on Monday (Feb 17) it was out of the Osaka race, too, with an executive saying, “We decided at this time that our focus should be on other potential locations in Japan, including, among others, Yokohama.”

At Bursa Malaysia today, Genting Bhd's share price rose five sen or 0.92% to RM5.49 at 11:35am for a market capitalisation of RM21.06 billion. The counter saw 680,900 shares transacted.

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