An era ends Tuesday. Stanley Ho steps down as chairman of Macau casino concession holder SJM Holdings, his last remaining post in a public company. Ho, 96, has reportedly not been active in business since falling at home in July 2009, leading to multiple brain surgeries. A larger than life figure who’s fathered 17 children by four women, Ho parlayed a 40 year Macau casino monopoly into a multibillion dollar empire, restoring relevance to Macau that had been absent for centuries, revolutionizing its links to the rest of the world with an international airport and high speed ferries. After Portugal left and Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn came to town and made him yesterday’s news, Ho got SJM back on top of the gaming heap. Macau might be a very different place if Ho had remained healthy, but his formal farewell, like his 2009 collapse, leaves SJM confused and incoherent.

I witnessed one of Stanley Ho’s final public appearances in Macau before suffering an apparent stroke that essentially ended his business career. On June 3, 2009, Ho accepted the Asia Visionary Award at the Global Gaming Expo Asia. The ceremony at Venetian Macao represented a moment of personal and professional triumph for Ho, with family photos representing half of Macau’s six gaming operators.

Oldest surviving son Lawrence Ho headed Melco Crown, a joint venture with James Packer’s Crown Resorts that two days earlier opened City of Dreams, opposite Venetian Macao, the second integrated resort in Cotai, the long disused landfill between Macau’s outer islands of Coloane and Taipa. The Crown partnership ended, but Nasdaq-listed Melco remains a major player in Macau and beyond.

Pansy Ho, running Ho’s Hong Kong listed non-gaming vehicle Shun Tak and seen as her father’s heir apparent, was a 50% partner with MGM in Macau development. Two weeks earlier, New Jersey declared her an “unsuitable” partner for MGM due to her business ties to her father, but she unabashedly posed with Ho at the ceremony. She now chairs Shun Tak, cleared billions selling down her stake in MGM China but remains its co-chairman and lifeline to a new casino concession. New Jersey relented.

From May 2004, Sands Macao proved customers wanted something better than Ho’s Lisboa, revolutionary when it debuted in 1970 but tired by its fourth decade. As competitors made nine-figure investments, SJM responded with Grand Lisboa then Ponte 16, matching the comfort and elegance of rivals at a fraction of the cost.

When the global financial crisis hit, Las Vegas Sands, which had sunk US$4 billion into Macau while spending even more on Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, teetered on the verge of bankruptcy and suspended construction in Cotai. Amid the tumult, SJM and Stanley Ho regained the revenue lead in Macau.

But Macau had changed. Cotai, which Ho had dismissed, proved to be the future, albeit arriving later than Adelson expected. Given SJM’s nimble reaction to the initial challenge, Ho might have found a remedy for lagging in Cotai. But weeks after the ceremony, Ho fell.

Without him, SJM fractured into professional management and family factions, then became a pawn in family battles over his fortune. The 2011 settlement boosted Pansy Ho through a stake and directorship in SJM’s majority owner STDM, but also guaranteed Ho’s fourth wife Angela Leong a six year extension as SJM managing director alongside CEO Ambrose So.

Since then, SJM has gone from Macau front runner to second string despite the city’s most casinos and tables. February’s opening of MGM Cotai leaves only SJM unrepresented in Cotai, now source for most gaming and high margin non-gaming revenue. SJM’s Grand Lisboa Palace there may not open before 2020. Galaxy, a company Macau tabbed for a casino license partly because it had no Ho connections, is credibly challenging SJM as Macau’s local champion, with chairman Lui Che Woo and his son and deputy chairman Francis Lui vying with Leong, Lawrence Ho and Pansy Ho to become the face of Macau gaming that Stanley Ho was.

With Ho’s resignation, Daisy Ho, Pansy Ho’s younger sister and her Shun Tak deputy, becomes SJM’s chairman. Leong becomes co-chairman, along with Timothy Fok, son of Henry Fok, one of the four partners in STDM’s winning bid in 1962 who later donated the stake to his family foundation. Ambrose So becomes vice chairman, and Stanley Ho’s third wife Ina Chan becomes a director.

“The entrenchment of existing management and governance at SJM continues,” investment advisory Sanford Bernstein Senior Analyst Vitaly Umansky writes. “We see no real positive changes to management that could turn the company in the right direction.”

There may never be another Stanley Ho, but it doesn’t take a visionary to see that SJM’s factions need unity to emulate his success. It’s easier lift for them than Ho, who was building the future of Macau along with his own fortune.