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Vietnam's MGM Grand Ho Tram Resort

David Jordan

| July 7, 2010

Image by: Ryan Heshka

There's a Vancouver connection to Vietnam's mega-project in the making, the MGM Grand Ho Tram Resort.

What do Wall Street money men, an ex-MGM hotshot,  a former prime minister and an upstart Vancouver developer have in common? A multibillion-dollar Vietnamese resort,  of course.

Laid-back Vancouverites aren’t known for talking a big game, so when a news report put Vancouver at the centre of a plan involving a New York hedge fund, a Las Vegas executive, former prime minister Jean Chrétien and a $4.2-billion resort development in Vietnam, one can be forgiven for giving one’s head a shake. But sure enough, Vancouver’s Asian Coast Development Ltd. issued a press release in April this year announcing it had hired Lloyd Nathan, former president of MGM Mirage Global Gaming Development, to take its Vietnam mega-resort development to the next level. 

Asian Coast secured permission from Vietnam in March 2008 to build that country’s first mega-casino, and New York hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners LP bought in early, taking an ownership stake in Asian Coast for an undisclosed sum. Former prime minister Chrétien – who these days hangs his shingle at law firm Heenan Blaikie LLP as an “international adviser” – was hired to help grease the wheels; he met with Vietnam’s Premier Nguyen Tan Dung on Asian Coast’s behalf first in May 2008 and again in April this year. 

The ambitious plan calls for a mega-resort 130 kilometres south of Ho Chi Minh City, on an undeveloped beachfront once frequented by U.S. soldiers seeking R&R during the Vietnam War. (Sweeping for mines was the first order of business, according to Asian Coast founder Michael Aymong.) Plans call for the Ho Tram resort to be built in five stages, the first two of which will involve a 1,100-room hotel and casino to be managed by MGM Mirage. Stage 1, budgeted at $400 million and including 550 rooms, is scheduled to open in 2013. 

The picture painted by the press release of a “world-class” resort featuring “chef-driven restaurants” and an “exclusive VIP area” is certainly impressive, but a number of questions come to mind, not the least of which is, What does this have to do with Vancouver? 

The answer lies in the person of Michael Aymong, the man who claims to have dreamed up the plan while travelling in Vietnam sometime around 2006. It was then that he happened upon the “unspoilt beachfront waiting to be taken to greater heights,” as he would relate to the National Post two years later. (Aymong declined to be interviewed for this story.) 

With partner David Subotic, a former vice-president at Haywood Securities Inc. who specializes in financing mineral exploration ventures, Aymong formed Asian Coast Development in 2006. Today the company shares office space with five investment firms in the Park Place office tower in downtown Vancouver.  

Originally from Toronto, and with an MBA from the University of Western Ontario, Aymong’s Vancouver connection dates back to April 2001, when he was named CEO of Starnet Communications International Inc., a Vancouver company that started out as a “provider of online adult entertainment,” according to its securities filings, and morphed into online gambling. The RCMP raided the Vancouver offices of Starnet in 1999, and Aymong steered the company through a guilty plea to one count of illegal gambling and a subsequent renaming and relocation to London, England. 