A longstanding court battle between the Philippines’ Bloomberry Resorts Group and Las Vegas-based Global Gaming Asset Management (GGAM) was settled yesterday after a decade of bad blood.
Enrique Razon, the Philippines’ third richest man and chairman of the Bloomberry Resorts Group, above. His company was accused by GGAM of illegally violating a contract related to the management of the Solaire casino in Metro Manila. (Image: Reuters)
Bloomberry announced in a regulatory filing Tuesday it would buy Global Gaming’s 921.2 million Bloomberry shares for US$300 million via a block sale on the Philippine Stock Exchange.
Bloomberry is owned by billionaire Enrique Razon, the Philippines’ third richest man. Its properties are the Solaire Casino Resort in Entertainment City, Metro Manila, and the Jeju Sun in Jeju Island, South Korea.
GGAM is a casino development and gaming management company headed by former LVS Corp COO Bill Weidner. It has experience of running some of the world’s biggest casino resorts.
Victim of Success
The spat dates back to 2011 when GGAM signed a five-year contract to manage Solaire on its completion. At the same time, GGAM acquired an 8.7% interest in the project.
Solaire opened in 2013 and was an immediate success. It began turning a profit within months. Six months later, Bloomberry wriggled out of its contract with GGAM – unlawfully, according to the American company.
Bloomberry also “ultimately withheld tens of millions of dollars in fees and other consideration owed to GGAM,” according to court filings by GGAM’s lawyers.
GGAM also claimed Razon “leveraged his personal relationships in the Philippine stock market to unlawfully prevent GGAM from selling its equity interest in the project.”
In 2019, an arbitration panel in Singapore ordered Bloomberry to pay $296 million to GGAM as compensation for wrongful termination, lost management fees, attorneys’ fees, and court costs. In 2021, Singapore’s highest court upheld the award.
But Bloomberry argued the award could only be enforced in the Philippines “through an order of a Philippine court of proper jurisdiction.”
Case Moves to New York
In 2021, GGAM sued Bloomberry in New York, asking the court to enforce the Singapore tribunal’s decision against Razon’s US assets. The lawsuit claimed these were concealed through a vast network of shell companies.
They included energy and mineral holdings in the Appalachian Basin, acquired from T. Boone Pickens for $150 million, Steve Wynn’s former residence at the Plaza, purchased for $24.4 million, and various substantial real-estate assets in New York.
The agreement to settle came after the New York court declined a motion by Bloomberry to dismiss the case last year. The settlement deal puts an end to all pending cases between the two parties, including those in Nevada, the Philippines, and Singapore, Bloomberry said Tuesday.
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