SA Groups in Race for Singapore Casinos

Two local casino groups have confirmed they have moved into the next round in their bids to secure lucrative contracts to develop casino, hotel and entertainment resorts on two sites identified by Singapore's government.

The Singapore government last week decided to license two resorts - which together will cost about $3bn - in a bid to recover the country's regional market share in tourism. The two sites that have been identified are Sentosa Island and Marina Bayfront.

Peermont Global, which owns resorts such as Caesars Gauteng, confirmed in a notice to shareholders on Friday that it had qualified to participate in the request for proposals phase of the integrated resort project in Singapore, while Sun International CEO Peter Bacon said Sun International had also been invited to participate in the next round.

The guidelines for the company's proposals are expected to be issued before June 30.

Nineteen proposals were submitted to Singapore's government by the end of February and Peermont Global CEO Ernie Joubert said he understood this represented about 13 participants, some of whom had submitted more than one proposal.

Peermont is assembling a consortium to propose a development on Marina Bayfront and making good progress, he said. This would be a very large resort, Joubert said, and Peermont envisaged it would become the group's flagship.

Bacon would not give further details at this stage about the group's partnerships, but he said Sun International was considering a development on Sentosa Island.

Joubert said Peermont envisaged that its South African investors would initially have a 5%-10% equity interest in the Singaporean subsidiary