Shareholders in James Packer's gaming company, Crown, are continuing to pay for the adventures of Mr Packer and his managers in the tanking US gambling sector. Crown has revealed an expensive way of getting off a rather nasty hook and postponing the high-priced purchase of casinos in Nevada and a racetrack and gaming palace in Pennsylvania. The US vendors and Crown have announced the termination of an earlier USD 1.75 billion deal...

James Packer's Crown Limited insists it is still committed to its promise to buy a suite of US casinos, but has warned that the earnings they will produce will be up to 30 per cent lower than previously anticipated. The Crown chief executive, Rowen Craigie, yesterday emphasised the company was working on finding a solution to save the deal from collapsing. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board cannot agree to the deal because Gretel Packer...

James Packer's massive punt on the US casino industry could be derailed by a probity investigation into the operations of Melbourne's Crown Casino. The embattled billionaire agreed to pay USD 1.75 billion (AUD 2.59 billion) for the Cannery Casinos chain in 2007 but still requires approval from a US gambling regulator for the deal to proceed. The Sun-Herald can reveal agents from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board will visit Melbourne next month...

James Packer’s Crown Limited may have received regulatory approval for its USD 1.75 billion acquisition of three Las Vegas casinos, but it could end up with only two following an 11th hour hiccup. A dispute over whether Crown can buy the leasing rights to Rampart Casino from the JW Marriott hotel group could leave it with less reach in the famed gambling mecca.

James Packer's Macau casino joint venture and the poker machine maker Aristocrat Leisure have been hit by further headwinds with gaming revenues in the territory falling for the third consecutive quarter. Gaming revenues in Macau slumped 7 per cent in the three months to December 31 to 24 billion patacas (AUD 4.5 billion), compared to growth of up to 67 per cent in 2007. They include bets on table games and on poker machines in casinos.

James Packer's gamble on casinos has already cost him billions but the workers at his Macau investment are the latest to pay the price. Crown Macau staff have taken a haircut of up to 8 per cent on their wages after government officials gave Packer's consortium, Melco Crown Entertainment (MPEL), permission to slash their salaries, reports The Daily Telegraph. MPEL is moving to cut costs as the Macau casino industry continues to be hit hard by the economic downturn...

A statement by Consolidated Media, which owns 25 per cent of PBL Media, said that chairman John Alexander would also stand down from the board of the media unit, which owns free-to-air TV operation Nine Network and ACP Magazines. Both moves take immediate effect and mean that Consolidated Media will not have any board representation at PBL Media. Consolidated Media shares had lost 2.48 per cent to AUD 1.97 late this morning, as the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index shed 1.14 per cent.

James Packer and Lawrence Ho, two sons of billionaires, opened a USD 524 million casino in Macau in May 2007. It was a flop. The empty building was "eerie," the 31-year-old son of casino magnate Stanley Ho said in an interview. Three months after Crown Macau's grand opening, the two co-chairmen of Melco Crown Entertainment, its Hong Kong-based owner, decided it was time to "throw in a nuclear bomb," Ho said.

James Packer can't be too pleased with the news coming out of Macau in recent days which has scraped a little of the sheen off the former Portuguese colony's success story. First there was a clampdown on Chinese nationals being allowed to visit, followed by news that UBS analysts in the US slashed Melco Crown's target price by almost a third to USD 8.81 (AUD 9.24). Then a slowdown in gambling triggered 270 job cuts at one of Crown Macau's biggest rivals, Galaxy.

James Packer's role in a proposed AUD 1.5 billion casino development in the Philippines now appears to be on a knife edge, following his office's denial of speculation yesterday that a deal was only weeks away from being finalised. The South China Morning Post said Mr Packer, executive chairman of Crown, was in advanced talks with a company called Bloombury to sign a deal to build a AUD 1.5 billion casino resort in the Philippines.

James Packer's publicly listed gambling company, Crown, and the poker machine maker Aristocrat are bracing for the impact of the strong economic headwinds undermining US casino earnings. In the past fortnight, the owner of the iconic Tropicana casino in Las Vegas has filed for bankruptcy and four of the US's largest gambling companies have reported earnings slumps. Most market observers said the falls illustrated that the industry was not as recession-proof as it liked to think.

Sydney (Reuters) - The site of a USD 5 billion casino project in Las Vegas has been put up for sale after the development group, which includes Australia's Crown Ltd, failed to come up with increased equity demanded by lenders, the Wall Street Journal reported. Crown, owned by billionaire James Packer, along with Texas developer Christopher Milam and private equity firm York Capital Management...