Japanese casino equipment giant Angel Group Company Limited is reportedly set to buy back gear worth approximately $300,000 from beleaguered operator Imperial Pacific International Holdings Limited.

According to a report from Inside Asian Gaming, the move from the Kyoto-headquartered playing cards giant comes after a local court lifted an injunction against the auctioning of the casino firm’s assets. The source explained that this reclamation exercise was arranged via debt collections specialist Clear Management Limited and is to encompass a complement of shoes and decks valued at something like $301,500.

Problematic past:

Hong Kong-headquartered Imperial Pacific International Holdings Limited reportedly opened the casino within its $650 million Imperial Palace Saipan development in July of 2017 but subsequently struggled to complete work on an adjacent 500-room hotel. The whole Saipan development was purportedly then thrown into financial difficulties owing to its closure from March of 2020 at the hands of the coronavirus pandemic and the consequent revocation of its license due to fee failures.

Appealing assurances:

Imperial Pacific International Holdings Limited is now thought to be in debt to the tune of well over $100 million and was last year reportedly ordered to conduct six auctions so as to raise cash for the partial compensation of a plethora of parties that includes the government of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. But this damaging command was purportedly later delayed after the firm offered to place up to $2 million in an escrow account pending judgement on a related court matter and revealed that it was to receive some $150 million from an outside investor for the complete satisfaction of its financial obligations.

Shy support:

However, this investment reportedly never materialized so as to leave the door open for the revocation of the earlier stay and the later appointment of Clear Management Limited, which is led by former casino executive Tim Shepherd. The first auction of Imperial Pacific International Holdings Limited’s equipment is now purportedly set to take place on October 7 followed by analogous public sell-offs every month until March of 2023.

Elevated enthusiasm:

In advance of this initial date and Shepherd reportedly noted that Angel Group Company Limited has agreed to repurchase the entire complement of 201 Super Angel Eye dealing shoes held by Imperial Pacific International Holdings Limited at a unit price of $1,500. The executive purportedly revealed that the Japanese company has furthermore arranged to pay ten cents for each of the over 1.93 million decks of unused cards being stored in the Imperial Palace Saipan venue.

Shepherd reportedly stated…

“We have been on standby as the legal wrangling continued and our concern obviously has been that this highly valuable gaming equipment has spent another year in the humid and muggy environment of a shuttered casino on a tropical island. The good news is that Imperial Pacific International Holdings Limited bought from world-class suppliers like Light & Wonder and Aristocrat Leisure Limited so the equipment we have seen is still in very good shape indeed with a lot of it having never come out of the box. The industry has also picked up globally and we have already been approached by new interested parties keen to feed demand for great casino equipment scarcely or not at all used in an auction like this.”