The once deafening, multibillion-dollar building sites along Macau's Cotai strip fell silent yesterday as a spiralling funding crisis at the Las Vegas Sands Corporation (LVS) stopped construction work in the world's new gambling capital.

In a further blow to the deeply troubled gambling titan, LVS was told that the Singaporean Government would not rescue the company if it runs out of money before the $2.7 billion (£1.8 billion) Marina Bay resort in Singapore is completed.

But the Government did not rule out the possibility that one of the country's giant sovereign wealth funds - GIC or Temasek - might step in to acquire the casino development.

In growing desperation, LVS is understood to have sent a formal request to the Government of Singapore to be allowed to open completed sections of its Marina Bay casino resort much earlier than planned.

As many as 11,000 workers are likely to be laid off because of the abrupt closure of the Macau building sites, adding to the deepening economic woes of the former Portuguese colony, as well as Hong Kong and the neighbouring province of mainland China.

The funding crisis follows weeks of gathering financial clouds over LVS - the company that owns the famous Venetian resort in Las Vegas and hoped to repeat that success in Macau by building an even bigger version on the doorstep of China's industrial heartland.

The shutdown comes amid concerns among industry veterans that the Chinese gambling fever which propelled the Macau gaming economy into the stratosphere earlier this year has suddenly died with the economic slowdown.

The Macau problems at LVS arise amid clear evidence that a wider crisis is stalking the gaming industry there. In a speech earlier this week, Edmund Ho, chief executive of Macau, issued what appeared to be a blanket guarantee for the industry.

“We will not allow any casino to just shut down and cease operations,” he said, stoking concerns that other casino operators may soon run into similar problems financing their building plans.

The closure of the LVS sites mark a humiliating blow for Sheldon Adelson, the 75-year-old entrepreneur whose entry to the Macau gaming scene has been beset by controversy.

He has relentlessly pursued the dream of making the Cotai strip a $15 billion “neon alley” to rival Las Vegas in both spectacle and scale. That vision has been laid low by the grim realities of the global financial crisis - in darkening times and with factories in Guangdong closing down at the rate of 20 per day, even China's notorious appetite for gambling has lost its edge.

Mr Adelson's critics and shareholders have regularly attacked his strategy for pursuing expansion much too aggressively.

For the moment at least, those doubts have been confirmed and the company will stand on the brink of bankruptcy if it defaults on some $5.2 billion of debt by the end of next month.

LVS announced on Monday a disappointing set of results that pointed to dwindling revenues at its vast Venetian resort, the largest casino on earth. But in a temporary fillip to investors, the company said that it had agreements to raise $2.14 billion in new capital - a figure that included a substantial sum from Mr Adelson and his family.

Yesterday, though, LVS's ability to meet its total funding burden looked more doubtful. Announcing the temporary shutdown of two sites under development next to the Venetian, LVS said that it was still trying to arrange between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in financing in order to set the concrete mixers churning again.

Stephen Weaver, the company's chief executive in Asia, said that it was not clear when that funding would emerge: “We've got $1.2 billion sunk in to the ground, we're not going to walk away from it,” he said. “I think there's no possibility that it's never going to start again.”

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