{"id":10266,"date":"2013-01-06T17:29:57","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T01:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=10266"},"modified":"2018-09-28T09:06:02","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T17:06:02","slug":"blood-on-the-boardwalk-marrandino-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/blood-on-the-boardwalk-marrandino-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood on the Boardwalk: Marrandino out"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"You can practically hear the wind whistling through the corridors of power as top execs continue to jump — or are flung — from the sinking Caesars Entertainment<\/strong> ship. First, CFO Jonathan Halkyard<\/strong> up and quits, in favor of the lower-stress environment of Nevada Energy<\/strong>. Now a major power vacuum is created by the ouster of Don Marrandino<\/strong>, viceroy of Caesars’ growing East Coast portfolio.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sure, Marrandino might have quit. Maybe. But the news went out late Friday night<\/a>, accompanied by the phrase “move on to pursue other interests<\/a>” … a favored corporate euphemism for ‘canned.’ The task of delivering Marrandino’s eulogy was delegated to operational chief Tom Jenkin<\/strong>.\u00a0 (At least Marrandino got a nicer send0ff than Halkyard did.) And so Caesars loses one of the few top-tier execs to display the “vision thing,” a quality sorely lacking in CEO Gary Loveman<\/strong>, a bean counter and hopelessly inept strategist. In deference to its best-performing Atlantic City<\/strong> property, Caesars gave autonomy to Harrah’s Marina<\/strong> General Manager John Smith<\/strong>, while regrouping its other three Boardwalk properties under Kevin Ortzman<\/strong>‘s stewardship.<\/p>\n

One news account strongly implies<\/strong> that the Don’s downfall was caused by a Marrandino indiscretion — and regulatory violation — involving credit extended to a visiting celebrity, leaving Harrah’s considerably out of pocket when Mr. X lost big and couldn’t cover his bets. Since Caesars is trying to get into Maryland<\/strong>, Massachusetts<\/strong> and Florida<\/strong>, it’s entirely plausible that Marrandino is a human sacrifice made to appease the regulatory gods.<\/p>\n

Since there’s no mention of a non-compete clause<\/a> (another indicator that points to a \"\"firing rather than a resignation), Marrandino is free to return to the Strip, where one or three troubled properties could use his expertise. Despite some recent decapitations at MGM Resorts International<\/strong>, Marrandino might be rather too ‘flash’ for CEO Jim Murren<\/strong>‘s low-key management style, although he could certainly use someone to sex up CityCenter<\/strong>‘s image … but Bobby Baldwin<\/strong> is more heavily soldered into place than ever, having just taken charge of Aria<\/strong>. Perhaps since Marrandino’s problems with the New Jersey Casino Control Commission<\/strong> are now a thing of the (recent) past, he ought to hang around the beach awhile. Revel<\/strong> is hanging by a thread and how much longer can CEO Kevin DeSanctis<\/strong> avoid responsibility? Marrandino seems like just the person you’d hire to give that property a shot at survival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can practically hear the wind whistling through the corridors of power as top execs continue to jump — or are flung — from the sinking Caesars Entertainment ship. First, CFO Jonathan Halkyard up and quits, in favor of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,56,28,36,7,72,112,11,25,157,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22570,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10266\/revisions\/22570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}