Most Manilans want to visit Solaire Resort & Casino,
a 18,500 square-meter casino, on a plot of reclaimed land along Manila Bay. The
glittering casino is the first of four resorts slated to occupy a Las
Vegas-style complex called Entertainment City along a 120-hectare strip in Bay
City. Who owns Solaire is no other than Enrique Razon, a lean, athletic
6-footer Filipino.
Known to friends as Ricky, Razon, 54, moved into
gambling after making a fortune with his Manila-based ports business,
International Container Terminal Services, Inc. (ICTSI), which moves containers
on and off ships in 19 countries. His 71 percent stake in Bloomberry Resorts
Corp., the publicly listed casino-hotel company which owns Solaire, accounted
for more than a third of Razon’s estimated $5.1 billion net worth according to
Bloomberg. According to Forbes, Razon is the third richest Filipino with a net worth of $5.2 billion as of August, 2014.
How
he started it all
His family got into the cargo-loading business before
World War II. His father wanted Ricky to go to college; the son dropped out at
the age of 17, saying he wanted to join the family firm. His father, miffed
that he left school, put him to work as a stevedore at minimum wage. The
younger Razon quickly worked his way up to operations manager at Manila South
Harbor. When he was just 20, his father put him in charge of implementing a new
contract to manage the port in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
In 1986, the new government of President Corazon Aquino
privatized the Manila International Container Terminal. In December 1987, the
Razons partnered with the country’s Soriano family to bid for the contract to
modernize and operate the port. They won. Razon bought out the Sorianos’ 23
percent stake in ICTSI in 2006.
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| Solaire Resort & Casino |
Razon became chairman of the company when his father
died in 1995 and started expanding. When Asia’s financial crisis hit in 1997
and 1998, ICTSI was running ports in Argentina, Mexico, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
Tanzania and Thailand. The meltdown sent the firm into a tailspin. Razon sold
most of the company’s assets outside of the Philippines to Hong kong’s
Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., controlled by Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest man. He paid
down debt with cash and started a new global push; his holdings now extend from
Brazil to Madagascar to India.
Razon traverses his empire in his personal Gulfstream
G550 jet. When at home, he spends time on the golf course and backs local
tournaments.
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