
Caesars’ bankruptcy proceedings have become increasingly messy, as the proceedings that are legal it threaten its long-term future.
Caesars Entertainment has failed in its bid to have litigation dismissed by a Delaware judge this week, despite arguing that the ‘material uncertainty’ engendered by the lawsuit against it ‘raises substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.’
It’s the casino giant has used foreboding language whenever describing its long-term future, since it continues to battle its second-lien bondholders over a bankruptcy case that is increasingly complex.
Caesars Entertainment wants to put its main operating unit, Caesars Entertainment Operating Corp. (CEOC), through Chapter 11 proceedings in order to restructure its industry-high debt.
However, the second-lien bondholders are suing, claiming that a number of CEOC’s assets were fraudulently transferred to Caesars Entertainment along with other subsidiaries for the good thing about its controlling equity that is private.
We Come to Bury Caesars
This left CEOC with distressed assets and an inability to spend it $18 billion debt load, they argue, while placing the many assets that are valuable associated with reach associated with the bondholders. In addition they accuse the business of fabricating a ‘good’ Caesars and a ‘bad’ Caesars; one to hold the valuable properties, the other to hold the debt.
Caesars argues that it paid value that is good the assets extracted from the operating device, including Caesars’s World variety of Poker rights, the Octavius Tower, Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Harrah’s New Orleans, Bally’s vegas and the Total Rewards customer commitment program, among others.
Lawyers for the casino giant have expected that the parent company, Caesars Entertainment, be protected from appropriate action during the course of the bankruptcy filing of CEOC. But on the judge rejected a bid to dismiss or stay the action wednesday.
Beware the Ides of March
It’s been a couple that is bad of for Caesars. Last week Judge Benjamin Goldgar, who is hearing the case in Chicago, appointed an examiner that is court-ordered unlimited time and budget to investigate the asset transfers and any resulting conflicts of interest.
The request that is initial an examiner had originate from Caesars itself, but only in relation to seven transfers challenged by the lawsuit. A spokesman for Caesars declined to comment on the decision.
Then, at a hearing of the Gaming Control Board, the ongoing company had been quizzed by board members on the cessation of retirement payments to ex-employees. It’s understood that 63 former workers, from executive level down, are owed nearly $33 million in retirement re payments as an ingredient of a plan that is supplemental company inherited through previous purchases.
Caesars’ attorney Steven Pesner told the board that the business was ‘looking into’ the matter, but also warned that it was facing ‘the largest and most bankruptcy that is complex a generation.’
Carl Icahn Compares Taj Mahal Union Management To Mobsters
Carl Icahn stated that union leaders are utilizing tactics similar to those of prepared crime. (Image: Huffington Post)
Carl Icahn has put a lot of cash into the Trump Taj Mahal in an attempt to conserve the Atlantic City casino, but there’s been one group it lightly: Unite-HERE Local 54, the union that represents workers at the casino that he hasn’t been on the best of terms with, to put.
Icahn while the union have had plenty of harsh words for each other on the past months that are few but Icahn may have just ratcheted up the rhetoric even more.
Letter Calls Casino Contributions Excessive
In a letter delivered to members of the union, the Trump Taj Mahal’s future owner called out the union’s leadership, saying that they were essentially extorting money from the casino by picketing the building and trying to hold on to their previous health plan.
‘ on the last five years, while the Taj Mahal went bankrupt not simply once, but twice, your Unite-HERE wellness plan has made $140 million in net income,’ Icahn composed within the page. ‘Yet also against the backdrop of your manager entering bankruptcy for the next time in 5 years, your union leadership continues to demand that the Taj make exorbitant efforts to your profitable Unite-HERE heath plan, or else suffer work unrest.’
Icahn earlier won a ruling from a bankruptcy court that determined he could break existing agreements with the union, which would allow him to get rid of the present health insurance and pension plans that union workers agreed to.
Icahn would instead have employees just take subsidies and submit an application for health care plans under the exchanges arranged by the Affordable Care Act. The union is appealing this ruling, but Icahn says that if they should win that appeal, he would likely close the casino.
Icahn Says Tactics Remind Him of ‘Bygone Era’
In the page, Icahn continued to compare the strategies of union leaders to those of unscrupulous figures of the past.
‘It all reminds me of that bygone period when organized crime would demand grocers pay for security, or suffer bricks being thrown through their store windows,’ he had written. ‘ The only real distinction right here is that rather of throwing bricks through the Taj Mahal’s windows, your union instead organizes strikes, picketing, boycotts and other attacks to deter customers from patronizing the Taj Mahal.’
That picketing has continued in current days. Last Friday, union members demonstrated once again, the fifth time they have done so since the bankruptcy judge’s decision last October.
‘Carl Icahn has determined to operate the Taj Mahal into the ground while he is waiting to go over,’ said union president Bob McDevitt. ‘Today we have been saying we’re perhaps not gonna take this anymore.’
Icahn Approved to Take Over Taj Mahal
Final Thursday, a bankruptcy judge approved a plan that may see Icahn take over Trump Entertainment Resorts, the parent company of the Taj Mahal. Icahn will swap $286 million worth of debt he owns within the company as a swap for that ownership when the business emerges from bankruptcy.
‘The Taj will remain available,’ stated US Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross at a hearing week that is last. ‘And it is a successful venture.’
That approval came just days after the casino reached a contract with Donald Trump that enables the Taj Mahal to help keep the Trump name attached to it for the near future. Trump and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, had been fighting to have their family name removed from the place.
Assemblyman Pushes For Nevada Lottery
Assemblyman Harvey Munford, that has a better chance of winning the lottery than he does of establishing one in Nevada. (Image: yogonet.com)
Assemblyman Harvey Munford desires to bring the lottery to Nevada. Yes, that’s right: the gambling capital of the global world does not have a lottery, and that’s in big part to the gambling industry of the gambling capital of the entire world, which doesn’t want the competition. It is even written to the state’s constitution: no lotteries! Very nearly 30 attempts that are legislative establish a lottery in Nevada since 1975 have actually failed.
However, Munford was undeterred as he addressed the Assembly Legislative Operations and Elections Committee this week, arguing that voters, rather compared to the casino industry, should be offered the possibility to determine the issue.
‘ This is a loss in revenue for our state that could be helping the education of our younger constituents,’ he said. ‘It would do so without increasing taxes.’
Long Chances
Members of the Las Vegas press have noted, wryly, that Munford has about as much possibility of making this happen as he has of… well… winning the lottery.
Since, as we’ve already established, Nevada does not have a lottery, that could put his estimated chances at zilch, which, in fairness, is only slightly worse than those living across the border in California or Arizona.
Nevada’s prohibition of lotteries was founded at statehood in 1864 and has remained sacrosanct since, although it was amended by voters in 1990 to allow charity lotteries. Munford’s Assembly Joint Resolution No. 6 wants to scrap the ban and embrace a state lottery as a way of supporting public education and promoting the ‘health and welfare of senior citizens.’
‘I know it’s been introduced sessions that are several I’ve been up here, and each time it’s always died. It’s never been able to go forward,’ said Munford, who is due to step down from office at the end of the present legislative session. ‘I just said, ‘I’m gonna give it another shot.’
Conservatives Aghast
Nonetheless, any legislation that proposes amending the constitution is certainly going to need a huge quantity of support. The bill would need to pass not just this session of the Legislature but the sterling silver 3d slots 2017 session also, before going to general public vote in 2018.
And there is opposition not just from the casino industry but also from conservative associations. Conservative activist Janine Hansen is aghast at the result that the lottery might have in a continuing declare that has one slot machine game for every ten residents. ‘It’s devastating for family to deal with a one who features a gambling addiction,’ she stated. ‘It destroys the grouped family totally.’
Should the issue ever get to public vote, nevertheless, it could possibly pass. A 2009 survey showed about 70 percent of voters were in favor. A lottery would bring $48 million an in profit for the state, research suggests year.
Judge Denies Ivey’s Movement To Dismiss Borgata Lawsuit
The Borgata’s lawsuit against Phil Ivey are permitted to continue. (Image: pokerground.com)
Phil Ivey may still ultimately come out on top up against the Borgata in the lawsuit over the $9.6 million he won at baccarat having an edge sorting technique.
But at minimum for now, a judge has said that the full case has enough merit so it should not be tossed out of court entirely, meaning the battle over those millions could go on for some time nevertheless.
District Court Judge Noel Lawrence Hillman denied a motion from Ivey’s lawyers to dismiss the fees against Ivey and other defendant Cheng Yin Sun, allowing the case to continue but giving few clues as to which part might have the upper hand in the legal battle.
The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa alleges that Ivey cheated in a few sessions by which he played baccarat at their casino, including fees of fraud, breach of contract and violations of RICO racketeering statutes.
Ivey Used Edge Sorting to Beat Casino at Baccarat
A dispute is concerned by the case over four sessions of baccarat that Ivey played in 2012, during which he won the $9.6 million that the Borgata is now trying to recover from him. Ivey used an approach known as edge sorting, by which he obtained conditions for the overall game where he was able to tell whether a card was low or high even when it had been face down.
That gave him an enormous advantage over the casino in a game where the home typically has an edge that is small.
This was possible because certainly one of the conditions involved having an eight-deck footwear made up of a certain kind of Borgata playing cards: purple-backed cards manufactured by Gemaco. Unknown to the casino, this particular brand had backs that have been maybe not perfectly cut; when Ivey then asked the dealer to turn high cards 180 degrees, ostensibly for superstitious reasons, he was then in a position to distinguish those cards even face down.