China's economic recovery and a long national holiday boost revenues

Pushing past recent its historical declines in revenues, the gambling enclave of Macau off the coast of China reported very positive October 2009 revenues of US$ 1.59 billion this week.

The Dow Jones news agency said that analysts attributed the strong results to the growing momentum of the Chinese economic recovery and an unusually long National Day holiday during the month under review.

Gambling revenue rose 42 percent higher in October from a year earlier, and was 17.6 percent higher than September's MOP10.8 billion, various monitoring agency and research reports said. The Macau government only publishes gaming data once every quarter, and it doesn't comment on monthly statistics reported by the press and analysts.

For October, SJM Holdings Ltd. continued to have the biggest market share of 30.9 percent among the six Macau casino operators, helped in part by the opening of a new casino in September. The casino company saw a 12.4 percent year- on-year rise in net gaming revenue to MOP 3.89 billion.