Casino mogul and mega-Republican Party donor Sheldon Adelson is leaving his Las Vegas Sands Corp. for cancer treatment, and is leaving his company amid economic uncertainty in the global gambling industry following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mr. Adelson, 87, founded Las Vegas Sands and continued to run the company after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which the company announced in March 2019. The billionaire is taking medical leave to resume cancer treatment.
Mr. Adelson, whose family is the majority shareholder of the company, has said his plan to succeed the current executive team, including 25-year-old Sands veteran Robert Goldstein and Mr. Adelson’s son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, to take over the company. lead, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
Mr. Goldstein, who was most recently Chief Operating Officer and President, was appointed acting CEO and Chairman by Sands’s board of directors during Mr. Adelson’s medical leave, the company said Thursday. Mr. Dumont joined the company in 2010 and is Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President.
Las Vegas Sands operates casino resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, Macau’s China Territory, and Singapore. When Covid-19 first toured the world last year, casino closings and pandemic restrictions wiped out the earnings of gambling companies. Las Vegas Sands sales plummeted 82% in the third quarter of last year compared to the same quarter of the previous year.