Billionaire Adelson Names Son-In-Law CFO of Las Vegas Sands

Las Vegas Sands Corp. named Patrick Dumont, son-in-law of founder and controlling shareholder Sheldon Adelson, as its chief financial officer.

The appointment fills a vacancy left open since July 2013, when Kenneth Kay stepped down from the role, and formalizes a role Dumont, 41, has already been performing, Las Vegas Sands said Wednesday in a statement.

Family relations in the executive suite are considered “a bit dicey,” according to Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, who called such appointments “pretty rare.” They can complicate the situation significantly, he said.

“The problem is injecting personal relations into the situation,” Elson said in an interview. “Sometimes the personal may affect the professional, and as an investor you don’t want to go there.”

Career History

Dumont will get paid $1.2 million in base salary and is eligible for a bonus of up to 100 percent of his annual pay. He was also granted options for 650,000 shares. Prior to joining Sands, he worked in investment banking at Miller Buckfire & Co. and Bear Stearns Cos. He has an engineering degree from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He’s been with the company since 2010.

“Patrick has been providing strong leadership to the financial function and handling the principal duties of the CFO role very effectively for some time,” Adelson, Sands’ chairman and chief executive officer, said in the statement.

Adelson, 82, is the 25th richest person in the world, worth $26.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The CEO has been predicting a turnaround this year in Sands’ Macau business, its largest unit, after a sharp decline in betting by high rollers following a Chinese government crackdown on corruption. The billionaire has also proposed building a $1 billion stadium in Las Vegas that could house a professional football team, saying it would bring more visitors to the city. Sands shares are up 20 percent in 2016.

Kay became CFO of MGM Holdings Inc. last year.