Pubs billionaire takes charge at Cairns casino in $200m deal
Hospitality magnate Sam Arnaout will take control of the Cairns Reef Hotel Casino in a near $200 million deal that ends a months-long campaign to acquire the facility and adds a fourth casino to the billionaire’s burgeoning portfolio of pubs, hotels and gaming venues.
The 128-room hotel and its associated gaming facility are held in an ASX-listed property fund, the Reef Casino Trust, in which Arnaout has steadily increased his stake after first approaching it in February last year.
This week Arnaout’s hospitality and property investment company, Iris Capital, announced that with a 96.5 per cent stake it had passed the threshold to move ahead with the compulsory acquisition of the remaining shares.
It is the second big casino deal Arnaout has closed this month, after also settling on his $NZ100 million ($80 million) purchase of the Christchurch Casino from Skyline Enterprises.
Arnaout’s ambitions for expansion into the New Zealand market may be greater after initially lobbing a proposal for SkyCity Entertainment, the embattled operator of gaming venues in Adelaide and New Zealand, in August, as reported in The Australian Financial Review’s Street Talk column.
Nick Lenaghan