Australian gaming group The Star is forging ahead with plans to close its corporate office “in its current form”, cutting jobs and decentralizing responsibility to its individual casino operations.
The Star currently operates casinos in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
According to the Australian Financial Review, the closure was detailed in an email sent to staff by new CEO Bruce Mathieson Jr.
The move comes after new company Chairman Soo Kim in December of last year indicated that “there are no sacred cows, and even the notion that we have a corporate office has to be examined”.
Kim assumed the Chairman role as a representative of Bally’s Corporation, which together with Mathieson-family backed Investment Holdings saved The Star from bankruptcy with a $300 million ($193.5 million) injection.
At the time, Kim had also indicated that a move to put the company “on the right track” could include significant job losses.
Kim’s appointment came after the resignation of former Star CEO Steve McCann, closely followed by the resignation of two other board members.
AFR indicates that the email regarding the corporate office closure was sent the same day The Star announced the resignation of the two board members: COO Jeannie Mok and CFO Frank Krile.
In the correspondence to staff, Mathieson didn’t indicate how many jobs would be affected as part of the corporate office closure, with AFR citing anonymous sources as being in the hundreds. The corporate office currently employs about 600 people.
“The corporate office has added complexity rather than value and simplification,” states the email, furthering: “We must get closer to our customers and to your front-line team. And we have to meet the regulatory imperative to decentralize the business and empower our property teams”.
In a previous interview from 2025, Soo Kim had indicated that “corporate has gone from 600 to 1,100 jobs in the last five years, which also runs contrary to business finance, but is also a regulatory mandate”. He hinted at the closure then, stating “the notion that we have a corporate office has to be examined”.
The Star’s head office is located in Brisbane, Queensland.
