The Star casino and hotel business is on its knees, its shares are suspended from trading, an administrator is hovering to flog the assets and one of Australia’s most prolific pub owners, Arthur Laundy, says bringing the operation back to life is too big a job.

For a business that made its money on the turn of the cards, it looks like a fire sale is on the cards.

You can bet a lot of deep-pocketed potential buyers have eyed off the Star Entertainment Group but many of them will return to the scene of the crime when the administrator starts looking for buyers for the group’s individual assets.

The bad news for shareholders will be that the odds are that they’ll no money for gambling on this troubled casino business.

The Australian talked to Arthur Laundy, who owns around 90 pubs, along with the Sheraton Mirage on the Gold Coast and the Sofitel Noosa. At age 84, he says it’s just too big a job for him and his family to breathe life back into this casino and hotel resort business.

“It’s within my scope,” he told journalists Lisa Allen and Ben Wilmot. “I thought that would not be a bad thing, but when I started talking to lawyers, I lost interest. I’ve got kids, and they’ve got young children. It’s just too big a job.’’

The current state of the company is that the shares are suspended because the directors refused to sign off on the accounts that should have been presented in the recently concluded reporting season.

Insolvency group FTI has been briefed to assume management control of the company, but these guys are likely charge tens of millions of dollars, which doesn’t look easily payable as Star is nearly out of cash!

The ABC says CEO Steve McCann holds out hopes that “two private equity firms remain in the mix. American outfit Oaktree Capital offered a $650 million refinancing package — essentially taking the banks out of the mix at a discount — a fortnight ago.”

There’s also a local unnamed private equity group eyeing off the assets but they’d be playing a hardball game trying to get the business at a bargain basement price.

Even US casino operator Bally's has had a serious look at the assets but as the ABC’s Ian Verrender noted: “It is more likely that all those circling, including Star's two Chinese partners in Queen's Wharf and Bally's in Sydney, are now waiting to pick up the assets under an administrator run auction.”

And they will get those assets on the cheap at that auction.

Star Entertainment Group Ltd

This chart shows the pain that SGR shareholders have had to endure but the big question is why has is $5.43 a share company in 2018 now worth 11 cents?

Try these reasons:

1. Failed management.
2. Ignored criminal activity, including money laundering.
3. Less Chinese tourists post-Covid.
4. State government regulation inquiries and related fines and threats to close the operations.
5. Unpaid tax bills to state governments.
6. The arrival of Crown in Sydney, which was only to accommodate high rollers.
7. A big 10% blowout of building costs with Star’s Queen’s Wharf precinct in Brisbane, which was expected to be a $3.8 billion spend.
8. The insistence of regulators that the business be run according to tougher regulations, which wasn’t appealing to some high rollers.
9. All these issues undermined profitability, which then took the share price down.
10. The failure of the board and a succession of CEOs to achieve a rescue and further funding led to an exodus of shareholders, which now has left the stock price at 11 cents and heading to zero!

In a nutshell, the value of Star was linked to the ignorance of dodgy practices by management and regulators but when the latter started doing their job, the future of the casino aspect of the business was challenged.

And the board was left holding a hopeless hand of cards.