US firm drops Spain mega-casino plan to focus on Asia

US casino operator Las Vegas Sands dropped plans Friday to invest over $30 billion in a mega-resort that promised 260,000 jobs for Spain, where one in four people are unemployed, and would focus on Asia instead.

The world's biggest casino company, owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, announced in February it had chosen Alcorcon, a suburb of Madrid, as the site for what would have been Europe's largest casino resort.

But Adelson said in a statement that Las Vegas Sands "did not see a path in which the criteria needed to move forward with this large-scale development can be reached".

"As a result we will no longer be pursuing this opportunity," he said.

The company would instead "continue aggressive pursuit of opportunities in Asia", where it operates properties in Singapore and Macao.

The "Eurovegas" project planned four casino complexes with 12 hotels providing 36,000 rooms, nine theatres, three golf courses, and convention centres, to be built over 10-15 years.

The company had said the project would create 260,000 direct and indirect jobs for Spain, which is gingerly emerging from a double-dip recession sparked by the implosion of a property bubble in 2008.

Spain's centre-right government had been keen to land the project, as the country grapples with a jobless rate of 26 percent.

But the government said the project fell through because it refused to meet Adelson's demands for legal protections for his business.

Adelson had sought assurances from Spanish officials that tax rates and other conditions granted to the company would not be changed by future governments, as well as restrictions on competition from other casino operators.

Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said the company "had put new conditions on the table" which were incompatible with the laws of Spain and the European Union.

"The government has the responsibility to attract as much foreign investment as possible to Spain, especially if it creates jobs, but it also has an obligation to preserve the general interests of all Spaniards," she told a news conference following a cabinet meeting.

Adelson had also been pressuring the government to exempt the project from Spain's ban on smoking in public buildings, but this had been fiercely opposed by anti-smoking campaigners.

Other opponents of the project, which included the Roman Catholic Church and members of the social protest movement known as "the Indignants", complained the casinos would spawn prostitution and crime.

They also argued it would mark a return to the excesses of Spain's property bubble.

"Developing integrated resorts in Europe has been a vision of mine for years, but there is a time and place for everything," Adelson said.

"Right now our focus is on encouraging Asian countries, like Japan and Korea, to dramatically enhance their tourism offering through the development of integrated resorts there," he added.

Las Vegas Sands operates The Venetian and The Palazzo casinos in Las Vegas, and Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and Sands Cotai in Macao, a former Portuguese colony near Hong Kong.

The company generates more than 85 percent of its revenues in Singapore and Macao.

Las Vegas Sands chose Madrid over Barcelona for the project earlier this year after months of talks with the two competing cities.

It had said it would provide up to 35 percent of the funding itself for the first phase of the project, which would cost 6.8 billion euros ($9.5 billion).