As though yoked by karma, Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson and former sidekick William Weidner — the Jon & Kate Gosselin of the casino industry — seem destined to remain unwillingly chained together through eternity. Most recently, they’ve been named as co-defendants in a shareholder lawsuit. Basically, it accused Sands management of crashing the stock price through incompetence and of making misleading statements.
With regard to the second matter, it looks like another instance of Sands being out of touch rather than deceitful. If Adelson uttered some moonshine about Chinese visa restrictions having minimal impact on Sands’ Macao operations, it’s just another case of Sheldon living happily in his own parallel universe, one in which everything goes the way he wishes. Meanwhile, Sands continues to let contracts as work finally resumes on its Cotai Strip™ metaresort. (Three hotels and a ginormous casino … sound like anyplace we Las Vegans know?)
As for Weidner, his alleged job-hunting expedition to Macao — if that’s what it was — appears to have borne no fruit. Maybe there’d be a spot for him in Sociedade de Jogos de Macau when Stanley Ho moves on to that big casino in the sky, but I wouldn’t hold my breath: The ancient casino oligarch has been supposedly “on the brink of death” for quite a few months now and may yet outlive us all.
Congratulations to the Hard Rock LV, which snatched up former Harrah’s Entertainment executive and (more recently) M Resort COO Joseph A. Magliarditi. No stranger to the Las Vegas scene — unlike much of Morgans Hotel Group‘s team — Magliarditi will hopefully have the know-how it takes to get the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino‘s mojo back. By choosing him, Morgans tacitly concedes that M, for one, has snatched the “hipness” mantle from HRH. Also, given M’s success in prevalently adverse economy makes me wonder if we’re going to see a more locals-targeted push from the HRH, which thinks itself a Strip megaresort but whose closest casino neighbor is … Terrible’s.
God help the man who tries to talk Golden Nugget CEO Tilman Fertitta out of anything. The majority owner of Nugget parent Landry’s Restaurants has received the green light for a $24/share LBO, though not without some dissension. If you hold any LNY stock, which closed the day at $24.69, you might want to move it while the price is still higher than what Texas Tilman is offering.
The decision to persist and spend another $1.4 billion on rounding up stock seems oddly timed. Given that we’re still deep in the Great Recession and Fertitta is now paying 61% over his original offer also makes me wonder if this is going to be another case of the dog that caught the car. But it’s been clear from the outset that Texas Tilman was going to make this happen and his doggedness has been rewarded(?)
Splitting the baby. State Sen. Richard Ross (R-MA) is among those Massachusetts legislators who would prefer racinos to resort casinos. Gov. Deval Patrick (D) sees it the other way around. Until now, a two-casino/four-racino compromise seemed inevitable but Ross now has a two-track solution (pardon the pun): racinos now, casinos later. It would certainly get tax money in the state’s hands faster and would be 2,000-machine boon to the slot industry.
Critics point out that the racinos would skim the cream off the top and that’s a good point. It’s pretty much what’s happening in Pennsylvania. However, in the race to get the first slots spinning, racinos will always be faster off the mark — and this is one steeplechase where you want to bet on the hare, not the tortoise. Pairing gaming companies with a half-billion or so to burn (although Genting Bhd lurks in the wings) with cities willing to host them is already a contentious process. Ross’ proposal at least gets the casino-legalization question out of the way and leaves the resort-development one to play out in its own sweet time.
