Billionaire casino mogul slams executives raking in millions in ‘outrageous’ bonuses and stock options – including those in his own company

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

No one has ever described Sheldon Adelson as a man happy with the world. Happy billionaires do not spend tens of millions of dollars trying to get Newt Gingrich elected president.

But it took a hearing in a Las Vegas courtroom to lay bare an unexpected target for the casino magnet’s ire along with Adelson’s more regular hostility to the “socialist” Obama, pot smokers and Palestinians.

The word’s eighth-richest man is no fan of other rich people. Or at least the “greedy” executive class raking in millions of dollars with what Adelson called “outrageous” bonuses and stock options that so disgusted supporters of the Occupy movement. High on that list are his own executives.

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While testifying on Wednesday in a civil suit rooted in allegations that his casino operation in Macao made improper payments to a Chinese official and had ties to Triad organised crime, Adelson unexpectedly enlightened the court on his feelings about the bonus culture.

Adelson peppered his testimony with references to the hardship of his poor upbringing as the son of east European Jewish immigrants in a one-room tenement in Boston before he became a salesman.

“I worked my whole life, coming from the other side of the tracks,” he said at one point.

“I had to go to summer camp as a beneficiary of charity,” he said at another.

The 81-year-old billionaire reflected on the struggle his parents faced throughout their lives.

“My father didn’t have as much as $100 in his bank account when he died,” he said.

Times changed for Adelson after he turned Las Vegas into a centre for conventions and then branched into overseas gambling. He joined the ranks of the mega-rich – today Forbes estimates he is worth around $36bn – as his casino empire boomed. But he wanted the court to know that he never forgot his roots, which appeared to make him particularly averse to those he regards as having had it too easy, including his own executives.

It was questioning about the contract for the former chief executive of his Macao casino operation, who says he was unfairly dismissed for objecting to payments that could be construed as bribes and for dealings with Triad-linked groups, that set Adelson off.

Steven Jacobs negotiated a deal for millions of dollars in stock options on top of his salary. Adelson was outraged. He said bonuses and stock options were like being paid two or three salaries when one would be perfectly fine.

“You take a man who’s earning half a million dollars, and it adds up to five or six million dollars a year,” he said.

Adelson was particularly aggrieved that Jacobs had stood firm in his demands when negotiating his contract.

“He’s avarice and greedy beyond reasonable,” he told the court.

That led Adelson down a path neither his lawyers nor anyone else in court was expecting: the issue of overpaid executives and their benefits.

The billionaire complained that his expatriate executives, deployed to postings such as Macao or Singapore, were sending their children to school on the company shilling at $30,000 a year in fees for each child. Then some of them were getting Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands company to pay $50,000 a year for college education. Adelson called that “offensive”.

On top of that there’s the housing allowance – $25,000 a month in Singapore, he stressed – and a car.

“Not a Toyota like they would drive here,” he thundered.

The judge listened in what looked like bemused silence as Adelson shifted to the high cost of flying executives’ families around the world.

“Sending whole families home four times a year is not acceptable,” he said. “When it comes to flying, it has to be first-class when the whole family could fly coach.”

Adelson’s mind was churning. It was about time he restricted his executives to a maximum of two-year foreign postings, he said – a policy, if implemented, likely to create alarm in Macao and Singapore.

Adelson contrasted the high life of his executives with those of his employees further down the pecking order in his casinos on the Las Vegas strip who rely on just the one salary. He is, he opined, a good employer.

“There’s a reason why we’re the only property on the strip that’s non-union. We treat our employees so well,” he said.

His luxury hotel and casino, the Venetian, has been the target of protests by the hotel workers union and others.

Adelson contrasted what he regarded as executive greed with his own philanthropy. This has included paying for a new headquarters for the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), $100m to fund Jewish Americans to visit Israel on “birthright” trips, and $150m to try to get a Republican to replace Obama in the White House. His favoured candidate was Gingrich but he kept the money flowing after Mitt Romney won the Republican nomination.

Adelson also funds a rightwing freesheet newspaper in Israel that ardently supported Binyamin Netanyahu in the recent general election and opposes a Palestinian state.

The billionaire’s passionate support for Israel was on show before the court hearing began as he praised the Kirk Douglas film, Cast a Giant Shadow, about the birth of the modern Jewish state, with his wife and lawyer.

But once he was on the stand, the combative style, described in court documents as having alienated Macao and Chinese officials, was on full display.

He read documents through a large magnifying glass and commented sarcastically, “I’m sure you’d get an A in English”, on being asked if one of them had been read aloud correctly.

He told the judge several times that he used to be a court reporter and tried to tell the opposing lawyer – James Pisanelli, a member of a self-described “boutique law firm” – what he was allowed to ask.

“This is overreach. Be reasonable. Talk about something that’s pertinent,” Adelson said in response to one question. The judge told him he had to answer it.

Adelson was asked about what Pisanelli suggested was an irregularity in a form with his signature on it.

“You want to send me to jail? I just bought a big home. I don’t want to move to smaller quarters,” he said.

“I’m not acknowledging perjury,” he said. “You can bring a civil or criminal charge against me if you want to make that accusation stick.”

Pressed on the issue, he said: “It’s harassment.”

In response to one question, Adelson avoided an answer and then fired back: “Do you want to argue?”

The judge smiled.

At another point, Adelson declared that a document that his own lawyers did not want admitted as evidence was proof he was right all along.

“That’s the end of your case,” he told Pisanelli.



No one in court appeared to agree.

Adelson resumes testimony later this week.