Gaming firm takes in strategic investors

MANILA, Philippines—Gaming firm Leisure & Resorts World Corp. has taken in publicly listed Vantage Equities Inc. and private investment management firm Capital Managers and Advisors Inc. as strategic minority investors to own a combined 12.44 percent of total stocks.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Capital Managers announced its purchase of a 7.33-percent stake in LRWC. This was equivalent to 62.308 million shares purchased at P7.50 per share, or a total block price of P467.3 million.

Vantage Equities Inc., in a separate disclosure, said it had acquired 5.11 percent of LRWC, equivalent to 51.14 million shares at P7.50 per share. This translates to P383.55 million in investment in LRWC from the Vantage group.

Some of the shares acquired by Vantage in LRWC were purchased through affiliate mutual funds Philequity Fund Inc., Philequity Strategic Fund Inc. and Philequity Small Cap Fund Inc.

Capital Managers is an investment firm led by the group of stock broker and businessman Eusebio Tanco.

“We believe LRWC is a good company. We think its future is bright given what it’s doing today,” Capital Managers president Monico Jacob said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Leisure estate and gaming firm Belle Corp. has tapped a unit of LRWC to operate and manage a P20-billion casino complex—targeted to be the country’s largest and most modern—that will rise in the Manila Bay reclamation area by the end of this year.

The casino project—which is expected to substantially increase Belle’s net income in its first full year of operations in 2012—is likewise seen to benefit the LRWC group, which will get 15 percent of the net win or 50 percent of the casino’s cash flow (as measured by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, taxation and amortization), whichever is higher.

Vantage—led by stock market veterans including Wilson Sy and Ignacio Gimenez—is into investment holdings, remittance services, Internet services and mutual fund management.