GENTING Hong Kong Ltd (Genting HK) is involved in a legal tussle with the German government. It isn’t about a casino licence in Deutschland but a shipyard in Germany’s northeast state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern an investment that Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay made in 2015. The rationale for the US$35 million-plus investment was to have a vertical integration, meaning owning a shipyard that could build cruise ships for Genting HK’s cruise operations.
Casino cruise ship operator Genting Hong Kong Ltd expects an unaudited loss of at least US$1.5 billion for the year to December 31, compared to a US$159-million loss a year earlier, it said in a Friday filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The company said the increased annual loss would be “mainly attributable to prolonged suspension of fleet-wide operations across the group’s cruise and cruise-related businesses,” due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Such suspension had begun “temporarily since February 2020”.
Genting Hong Kong – part of the Malaysia-based Genting group – controls the Dream Cruises, Crystal Cruises and Star Cruises brands. The firm is also an investor in the Resorts World Manila casino resort in the Philippines.
The purchaser of a 50-percent stake in a Genting Hong Kong Ltd subsidiary involved in developing a waterfront hotel scheme in Macau (pictured in a file photo), has the option to buy the remaining 50 percent in the subsidiary, at any time up to December 1, 2021.
That is according to a Thursday filing from Genting Hong Kong, an operator of casino cruise ships.
If the purchaser does not exercise the call option, Genting Hong Kong can then exercise a put option to require the purchaser to acquire the remaining 50 percent in the subsidiary. Such put option may be exercised during the period from December 2, 2021 to December 1, 2022.