The news came in a terse statement from Las Vegas Sands yesterday which said that Weidner had been replaced by Michael Leven, who has served as a member of the company's board of directors since August 2004.

At an analyst gathering in advance of the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas last November,Weidner spoke candidly of the boardroom discussions which had prompted Adelson to pump $1bn into the company in two tranches to prop the business up.

He told an audience of shocked investors; “You can think of it as a junkyard dog fight... This is an unprecedented time. You’ve got four or five A-plus personalities and a couple of A-minus personalities and the moderates are the As, so you’ve got personality types who are focused and interested in executing – one another or the business plan.”

Now it appears that Weidner himself has become a casualty.

Weidner has served as president and chief operating officer since December 1995 and had responsibility for all of the corporation's development activities. In that time he has been responsible for the creation of the Venetian in Las Vegas and more recently the Palazzo, and LVS’ move into Macau with the Sands Macau and the Venetian Macau.

Rumours had indicated that since the end of last year, when it became apparent that Las Vegas Sands was – like much of the rest of the US gaming giants – caught in the pincers of the credit crunch, there has been huge tensions on the board. Many senior managers apparently felt that Adelson had waited too long to come to the aid of the business, destroying the value of their share options in the process.