Crown Resorts’ CEO told AGB that he had little doubt that the group would be found suitable to maintain its casino licenses in both Sydney and Melbourne, but that the process was much more intense than anticipated, and oversight is unlikely to let up.
Sitting down with AGB, Ciarán Carruthers noted that “I was always extremely confident that we’d get it done because I knew the commitment was there, I knew the level of experience was there, I knew the funding was going to be made available from Blackstone and we spent over AU$200 million since that acquisition in making sure that the work was there and the resources were there.”
The positive result for Crown Sydney came out towards the end of April, about one month after the group notified that it was found suitable to keep its Melbourne license.
Blackstone assumed its majority control of the company in 2022, Carruthers joined as CEO the same year.
“Those problems were not new owners, new management, they were historic legacy issues,” notes Carruthers.
The two remediation processes not only involved hundreds of millions of dollars and over 10,000 pages of documents, but also comprised a complete rework of the company’s culture.
“When you’re doing the cultural transformation, you have to look at everything: all your ways of doing work, the way that you make decisions, the way that you engage with each other, with the guests, with the community, with stakeholders”.
The executive notes the pressure on the company in “breaking all of that down and then rebuilding it from the ground up, under a very tight time frame, under an incredible amount of scrutiny – both from regulators, monitors, media and the community – as we were rebuilding that trust.”
Looking ahead, Carruthers furthers that “the challenges of the past in Melbourne and in Sydney have been dealt with. The regulator is now comfortable. They know that we are a different organization, different owners, different Chief Executive, different Boards.”
However, Crown Resorts still has one hurdle to overcome: Crown Perth.
“We’re still going through the remediation process in Perth. That’s a process that has probably another 12 months,” notes the executive of Australia’s largest casino operator.
But the same level of confidence displayed prior to the vindication in Melbourne in Sydney is also present for Perth.
“I know we’re going to commit the resources that are necessary to ensure we get across the line and prove to that regulator, that jurisdiction, that community, that again we are suitable to hold one of these privileged licenses,” notes the CEO.Time will tell, but Crown is confident that “you can successfully run an integrated resort by taking an approach that’s driven by integrity as a core value”.
