Lim Kok Thay, the billionaire chairman and chief executive officer of Genting, plans to boost its stake in Echo Entertainment Group.
Lim is Malaysia’s third-richest man with an estimated net worth of $7.5bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“We bought a stake in Australia at a time when James Packer invested first. And now of course Mr Packer has sold his stake in Echo. We have done nothing since our initial stage, because we have to go through the regulatory process.
‘‘Echo’s stake actually covers two regulators, the state of New South Wales and Queensland. They may not take doubly as long, because the two states have agreed that they will cooperate to process our application, to allow us to go beyond the 10 per cent stake.’
“The application has been in for a while. So we are just patiently waiting. It’s a two-way process; they would ask for more information and we would have to compile the information and we would feed them with it and they would ask more questions. My guess is it will go on for a while.’’
On the size of stake Genting wants in Echo, he said: ‘‘We have not formed any views yet, especially now that Mr Packer has sold his shares for the reason that he is working on a competing casino and the state seems certainly very keen to see competition in New South Wales.
“All these are factors that as an investor we would have to take into consideration. So we have formed no views yet. We would cross that bridge after we’ve got our licence.’’
