Melco shakes up senior leadership

Tuesday 23rd of January 2018

Melco Resorts & Entertainment has announced a major management reshuffle, with David Sisk named as property president for City of Dreams Macau, replacing Gabe Hunterton, who will leave the company.

Geoff Andres, who is currently president of of City of Dreams Manila, will replace Sisk as property president at Studio City in Macau.

Kevin Benning, who was formerly VP of gaming operations in Manila, has been promoted to senior VP and chief operating officer of the Philippine property.

“The redeployment of our senior operating management across our integrated resorts is aimed at optimizing our operating excellence,” Melco CEO Lawrence Ho said in a release. “We are leveraging on key individuals who all have demonstrated their expertise in managing and delivering strong growth.”

Analysts at Bernstein Research noted that City of Dreams Macau had been undergoing operational difficulties, which probably led to the shake up.

“For now, we are giving these management changes the benefit of the doubt, but we would need to see improvement at CoD in 2018,” the note said. “CoD is now a turnaround story in our view (with a catalyst coming from Morpheus) as Q4 will confirm considerable problems, which in our view accelerated these management changes.”

“CoD has underperformed other MLCO properties since Hunterton took over in Jan 2017, especially in Mass GGR and Mass hold rate. While CoD Macau has underperformed in Mass, both Studio City and Philippines continued to show reasonably good ramp up,” it said.

Sisk joined Melco as property president of Studio City in 2016. He has more than 25 years of experience with operators including Sands China, Wynn Resorts, Resorts World Sentosa and Caesars Palace.

Andres was appointed as property president/COO of City of Dreams Manila in November 2015, bringing 30 years of experience in the gaming industry.

Bricks & Mortar