pure specialist hotel and gaming

National Leisure and Gaming Limited (NLG) was incorporated in April 2005. The only pure specialist hotel and gaming company, NLG listed on the Australian Stock Exchange on 14 December 2005. NLG’s core business is the operation of a portfolio of quality leisure and gaming venues, adding value through active management to build high performing businesses. NLG is actively participating in the consolidation of a growing and dynamic industry through strategic acquisitions.

Between 2005 and 2007 11 hotels in Queensland were acquired. In June and July 2007 NLG completed three company transforming transactions: merger with Grant Samuel Laundy Pub Fund (GSL), acquisition of Gaming Asset Management (GAM) and the Iris Hotel Group. This expansion made NLG Australia’s fourth largest hotel operator with 39 leasehold hotels and around 1,000 electronic gaming machines. NLG now operates 20 of the top 200 NSW gaming venues.

The operational management team of the Grant Samuel Laundy Pub Fund, led by the Laundy family, with some 50 years of experience in operating hotels and experience in gaming venue operation, manages all 39 NLG hotels. Nineteen of the recently acquired hotels acquired from GAM and Iris in the gaming corridor of Western Sydney are being refurbished. The combined portfolio has a balance between Western Sydney gaming venues, northern Sydney and city hotels, destination venues, and regional NSW and Queensland hotels.

A co-operation agreement with the Laundy Hotels Group gives NLG access to the supply terms, gaming technologies and expertise of Laundy hotels, including the proprietary wide area jackpot, know as Lasseter’s Loot, which will be introduced across the NLG portfolio. NLG will leverage off the combined buying power of its hotels and those of the Laundy Hotel Group: a total of around 100 hotels.

NLG’s merger transaction with GSL included strategic alliances with two industry leaders; the Laundy Hotels Group, the largest privately-owned hotel group in Australia, and Hedley Leisure & Gaming Property Services Limited (Hedley), the company associated with major hotel owner Tom Hedley. The alliance with Hedley, one of the largest hotel property owners in Australia, also gives NLG first right of refusal to acquire any hotel leasehold acquired by Hedley outside Queensland.

NLG also has a strategic alliance with MFS Diversified Trust (MFT.AX) under which both parties will jointly purchase pubs, with NLG acquiring the leasehold interest and MFS the freehold interest. This alliance effectively eases the capital constraints associated with the purchase of freehold property and will enable NLG to fast track its growth aspirations.