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(T H E P O R TFO LIO ) . * * ‘ ?«** v \ '= ; ? x J J . ...;•£ P H S,>1 ? v «.>. -: t>: 4»~ I HUH : s T ^ ;" 'ffiii]|iViiji'»)lj|)L U m iiiitffl xmsmxHi SHHMS mmmsmmm a I P s jafcr m i p m m The Neuu Game in Vegas LAS VEGAS HOTELS HAVE COME A LONG WAY since the Dan Tanna era, in dining (Picasso), decor (Bellagio), luxuriousness (Venetian), hipness (Palms), entertainment (Cirque du Soleil), and shopping (all). But there’s still a critical problem: Every hotel in Las Vegas is an aesthetic disaster. That’s not an accident. The point of a hotel casino is pretty much the same as a prison: cram as many people as you can inside and keep them there. They’re designed by gaming executives, not architects. That’s why there’s about 500 feet between the street and the entrance, usually buffered by ugly and dangerous park­ing garages. Even all those great stores are hidden. But a genuinely neiu idea is coming to the Strip, and it could be the best bet in the city. It’s another giant hotel— with 2,700 rooms in 61 stories, a 70,000-square-foot casino, a big spa and theater, just south of the Bellagio—-but there’s a difference. Only 1,000 of the rooms are regular hotel rooms. The other 1,700 are condominiums, oioned by actual people. The owners build equity (prices for studios and one bed­rooms range from $650K to $1A mil) while having access to all the usual hotel stuff—-room service, concierge, maids, et cetera. And there’s a tuuist-— oujners can put their units into the hotel rental pool when they’re not using them. They’ll get at least half of the proceeds from each night’s net rental. But the biggest difference is that the place, called the Cosmopolitan, looks good. Cool even, it looks like it’d be at home in South Beach. Which makes sense. The developer, Bruce Eichner, made his bones in Manhattan and then built the Continuum in Miami, which produced sixty-seven price increases before the first unit was occupied. The idea is not without idiosyncrasies. The apartments come fully furnished, in­cluding flat-screen TVs, but if you want to put your unit in the hotel-room pool, you can’t change the interior. And there’s the question of whether anyone would want to live right on the Strip. So far, the answer seems to be yes. Brokers looking for units to sell are already clamoring, and the place won’t even break ground till summer. — K. K. latest stage of development, five recently announced positive trial results. The one I’m most excited about (and not just for personal reasons, smart-ass) is Acomplia, the company’s breakthrough antiobesity drug. Results from a European study confirm what a North American study al­ready found: 60 percent of participants lost 5 percent of their body weight. The drug takes a totally different approach than previous drugs, w hich are either dolled-up amphetamines or attach to fat in your food (and make your underpants look like a pizza). Acomplia works on the brain, blocking the receptors that stimu­late appetite. It has literally the inverse of the effect that smoking pot has. Sanofi will seek FDA approval for the drug late this year and hopes to have it within a year af­ter that, and health-club-industry analysts are already worried about the potential impact of this magic weight-loss pill. Just as promising as its new drugs are so-called off-label applications of its existing drugs. As drugs face ever-greater legal challenges, the value of existing drugs, whose risks are better understood, rises. The company’s Eloxatin, a chemotherapy drug previously reserved for late-stage treatm ent of advanced colorectal cancer, was approved last year as a first-line thera­py. If the labeling were expanded to other types of cancer for adjuvant therapy—post­surgery treatment to eradicate remaining cancer cells—sales could quadruple. Of course, there are risks. The compa­ny faces the usual harassm ent from am­bulance chasers, though nowhere near the agita of Merck, Pfizer, and Novartis over Vioxx and Celebrex and other Cox- 2 inhibitors. Fights w ith generic makers over Plavix, w hich accounts for 7 per­cent of net sales, are a hassle as well. And there are some special dangers here; more than a th ird of its w orkers are French, and their shiftless insistence on a thirty-five-hour workweek makes con­trolling costs difficult. And yet controlling costs is one of the things I like best about Sanofi. It’s why I believe in its strategy of growth through acquisition. And it’s w hy I think the merger w ith Aventis will be so effective. T here’s a small but chronically over­performing mutual-fund company called Mairs and Power. Based in Minnesota, it invests a disproportionate amount of its money in companies headquartered in its home state, like 3M. I once asked its founder how he maintained his excellent returns, especially w hen he was so over­w eighted in companies whose profits were dragged down by Minnesota’s high taxes. He explained that their high taxes were the exact reason he liked those com­panies: They had learned how to be lean enough to com pete w ith their lower-taxed competitors, and that discipline car­ried over into every area of their business. Sanofi has shown the same character, one of the unexpected benefits of social­ism. By staring down France’s cuckoo la­bor situation and America’s tendency to sue everyone and spend itself silly on mar­keting, Sanofi has learned how to run a tight ship. In January, I bought a thousand shares at $37. I’m looking for $50 by the end of this year and as much as $100 over the next three years. \t the rules RULE NO. 102: Never allow your fashion sense to be dictated by “island” culture. RULE NO. 673: Spray a woman with water and she looks hot; fully submerge her and she just looks blurry. RULE NO. 877: Fat wallet bad; fat money clip good. RULE NO. 987: Irony doesn’t work on a tombstone.