Stanley Ho and the Macau Gambling Monopoly

Stanley Ho at a glance

Who Stanley Ho was

Stanley Ho Hung Sun was born in Hong Kong on November 25, 1921, into a family that had already made its name in the colony's trading elite⁵. His grandfather was Ho Fook, the comprador of Jardine's, and his great uncle was Sir Robert Ho Tung, one of Hong Kong's most prominent businessmen⁹. That background gave him connections, but not the fortune he later built.

He was educated at Queen's College and then admitted to the University of Hong Kong on a scholarship¹⁰. In 1987 the university awarded him an honorary Doctor of Social Sciences at its 130th congregation, a sign of how far the family name had traveled from its trading roots¹⁰.

His public roles went beyond business. He served as a Standing Committee member of the 9th to 11th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and in 2010 he was awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal, Hong Kong's highest honor¹¹. He also held honors from Portugal, Britain and France, including Commander of the Order of St John and Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur⁹.

From refugee to wartime fortune in Macau

The story that made him famous starts with almost nothing. In 1941, at the outbreak of the Pacific War, Ho fled to Macau with HKD 10 in his pocket¹². He had already earned his first money in Hong Kong, $10 for serving as an air-raid warden⁹.

In Macau he traded food from the neutral colony on junks during the war, helping bring supplies in while the region was cut off¹⁰. He joined the Macau Cooperative Company and worked across the food trade, and by the end of the Second World War in 1945 his wealth had grown to HKD 2,000,000¹². He made his first million by the age of twenty-four⁹.

Already successful in Macau, he returned to Hong Kong in 1947⁹. From 1948 he was Managing Director of the Hong Kong Match Factory, and in 1957 he turned his attention to real estate⁹. That decade in Hong Kong property gave him the capital and the local standing he needed for what came next.

The 1962 license: how the monopoly began

Macau's gaming sector was consolidated in 1961, when a bidding war ended with a consortium led by Stanley Ho acquiring the gaming monopoly⁶. His syndicate obtained the gambling franchise in Macau in 1962⁹. The concession was granted by Macau's then Portuguese administration under a monopoly arrangement¹.

The paperwork was signed far from Macau. On March 30, 1962, Ho signed the first contract of Macau's casino monopoly concession at Portugal's Overseas Ministry in Lisbon¹. That single contract set the terms for four decades of exclusive operation.

The company behind it was Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau, known as STDM. It exercised exclusive operational control of Macau gaming for four decades, until 2002⁶. For most of that period, if you wanted to gamble in Macau, you were gambling with Stanley Ho's company, whether you knew it or not.

STDM and SJM: the companies behind the casino empire

STDM was the parent, and SJM was the operating arm. SJM is controlled by Dr. Stanley Ho, who through SJM and its parent entity STDM controlled the monopoly concession on gaming operations in Macau from 1962 to 2002⁷. SJM Resorts, S.A. still describes itself as operating together with its parent company STDM¹³.

After the monopoly ended, SJM Holdings became one of six companies granted casino concession contracts in Macau¹⁴. The 2002 licensing round that broke the monopoly awarded concessions to SJM Holdings, with STDM as its principal stakeholder, along with⁶:

• Galaxy Casino S.A.
• Wynn Resorts Macau S.A.
• Venetian Macau S.A.
• MGM Grand Paradise
• Melco PBL Gaming, Ltd.

Several of those were sub-concessionaires of the main three.

SJM Holdings today manages properties including the Jai Alai Hotel¹⁵. The company's heritage page traces its own history back to the monopoly years, which is a reminder of how completely one firm's story and one city's gambling industry were once the same story¹³.

The monopoly ends: Macau opens to foreign operators

The end came in stages. Macau put an end to the monopoly system on the gaming industry, which had lasted for decades, upon the passing of the Gambling Ordinance on August 30, 2001². Stanley Ho's management monopoly was set to expire at the end of 2001, after which entry by multiple companies and partial public operation would be considered¹⁶.

The Macau government ended the 40-year monopoly in 2001, and the market opened the following year². In May 2004, the first fully foreign owned casino in Macau, The Sands, opened its doors¹⁷. That opening marked the real break: for the first time, a visitor to Macau could walk into a casino that had nothing to do with Stanley Ho.

Macau casinos have been open 24 hours since at least 2021, according to the city's tourism office¹⁸. That round-the-clock model is a legacy of the monopoly era, when the concession holder ran the tables on its own schedule and the city built its visitor economy around them.

What the empire covered: casinos, ferries, property and beyond

Ho's holdings were never only casinos. His main enterprises included SJM Holdings, Melco International Development, Shun Tak Holdings, Macau International Airport Company and Luso International Banking⁴. He was Group Managing Chairman of Shun Tak Group, and he was its founder and administrative chairman¹⁹.

Shun Tak's business reached into shipping, property, investment, hotels and entertainment and leisure services²⁰. He was Chairman or Managing Director of many companies in Hong Kong and Macau, including Metro Realty, Shun Tak Shipping, Far East Hydrofoil, Excelsior Hotels and Investments, with interests also in Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Spain⁹. The ferries that carried gamblers from Hong Kong to Macau were part of the same group that ran the tables they sat down at.

He also held a stake in Melco, with approximately 1.77% of Melco's outstanding ordinary shares as of the end of 2007⁷. And he started investing in mainland China as early as the 1970s, supporting its reform and opening-up¹¹.

The scale of the operation is hard to overstate. Operating or owning 20 casinos and related businesses, he employed a quarter of the labor force in Macau³. For a city of Macau's size, that made him less a businessman than an economic system.

Family, wealth and honors

Ho had 14 surviving children by four wives³. The family structure was complicated, and it became public. In early 2011, while he was recovering from brain surgery, the families of his second and third wives fought for control of his companies³. That dispute played out in the press and in the courts long before his death.

His wealth was reported at very different figures at different times. In 2010, his reported fortune was US$2.1 billion⁸. By 2017, Bloomberg estimated the family fortune at more than $12 billion³. The two numbers measure different things: one is a personal fortune as reported at a point in time, the other a family fortune across a corporate empire.

His honors were international. From Portugal he held the Commander of the Order of Benefaction and Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator; from Britain, Commander of the Order of St John; from France, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur⁹. He also donated $20 million for the construction of the Macau Forum sports stadium⁹.

Death, funeral and the estate dispute

Ho died on May 26, 2020, at 1:05 pm⁴. He passed away peacefully at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital¹. He was 98.

The funeral followed in July. The funeral procession and burial were set for July 10 at Chiu Yuen Cemetery, 1 Mount Davis, in Hong Kong. A public memorial was held before the burial.

The estate dispute did not end with the funeral. In August 2020, Pansy Ho filed a caveat with the Probate Registry in the dispute over his estate. In September 2020, Angela Ho, second daughter of Ho's first family, filed with the High Court seeking the appointment of an estate administrator. The family's disagreements, which had already surfaced during his lifetime, continued in Hong Kong's courts after his death.

His influence outlasted him in other ways too. SJM Resorts remains one of Macau's six concessionaires, and in September 2023 the Macau government and SJM Resorts announced a revitalization plan for the New Road and Inner Harbour area, turning it into a new cultural tourism and leisure district. The company that once held the whole city's gambling business now works with the government on neighborhood projects.

For anyone interested in how the monopoly years fit into the wider story of Asian gambling, the STDM monopoly page covers the franchise itself, and Casino Lisboa covers the landmark property most associated with the era. The broader context sits in Asia's gambling tycoons and in gambling farms and monopolies, which explains how colonial governments across the region taxed gambling through exclusive licenses long before Macau did it.