… you hear coming from the offices of Texas Pacific Group is a 46% writedown of its equity stake in Harrah’s Entertainment. As detailed in the Financial Times (registration req’d), $1.4 billion has turned into $759 million at the stroke of a pen. Which is another way of saying all those Harrah’s shares for which TPG paid $90 apiece have lost roughly half their value.
Of course, it’s no sweat for TPG. It’s not CEO David Bonderman‘s money, it’s other people’s diñero. (Besides, the boorish Bonderman‘s busy fighting alongside co-bungler Leon Black of Apollo Management to keep his tax bill down.) While Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman has been coyly hinting at an imminent re-IPO of the gaming behemoth, FT reports, “The paper losses on the investments in [companies including] Harrah’s and Univision make it unlikely TPG will be able to cash out of these holdings and return any proceeds to investors soon. However,” the article continues, TPG “will have many years to turn round the fortunes of the companies before it is obliged to reward investors.”
In other words, if you’re James Packer (who still dreams of recouping his Harrah’s investment), don’t stay up nights waiting for that dividend check.
I think James Packer started investing in casinos in Las Vegas sometimes in 2007, with him investing $250 million in the Fontainebleau (which Carl Icahn purchased out of bankruptcy earlier this year for $157 million dollars). James Packer also invested in the aforementioned Harrahs and Station Casinos. Three investments which all wound up pretty bad. I think he owns some casinos in Australia (where he is from) and Macao. Hopefully those are doing better than his Las Vegas investments.