Amax hires insolvency firm

Junket investor Amax Holdings issued a profit warning on Wednesday night announcing it had hired a corporate restructuring and insolvency expert firm. Amax, controlled by long-time Macau VIP room operator Ng Man Sun, hired Horwath Corporate Advisory to assist with "assessing the recoverability" of HK$1.9 billion that Amax raised in a 2007 share placement and later indirectly loaned through its Macau unit, AMA International, to 10 VIP junket agents in Macau, the South China Morning Post reported. Those junkets used the money to provide credit to VIP players at Melco Crown Entertainment’s Altira casino (previously known as Crown). Amax, which also owns a 49 percent stake in Greek Mythology casino, said it now expected to book a "significant loss" for the fiscal year to March. The firm was scheduled to report final results today, but has delayed doing so until July 30. AMA’s partnership with the 10 unnamed junket agents was affected by the government’s move to cap commissions in the VIP segment at 1.25 percent of their VIP chip sales. Amax was paying junkets a commission of 1.35 percent. With the new regulatory framework, junkets abandoned AMA and started to deal directly with Melco Crown. Amax also announced that Corey Wong Lee-Ping has recently rejoined the company as CEO after a short hiatus.