{"id":10397,"date":"2013-01-28T16:40:58","date_gmt":"2013-01-29T00:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=10397"},"modified":"2020-05-26T05:25:19","modified_gmt":"2020-05-26T13:25:19","slug":"ader-strikes-at-igt-government-bailout-for-trump-rejected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/ader-strikes-at-igt-government-bailout-for-trump-rejected\/","title":{"rendered":"Ader strikes at IGT; Government bailout for Trump rejected"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rumbles of mutiny against International Game Technology<\/strong> CEO Patti Hart<\/strong> have been growing in volume<\/a> for quite some time. Those growls rose to a shout today<\/a> with an e-mail blast from The Ader Group<\/strong>, soliciting shareholder proxies for the March 5 meeting at which the IGT board of directors stands for reelection. Former Wall Street<\/strong> analyst Jason Ader<\/strong> is putting forward an insurgent slate led by former IGT CEO Charles Mathewson<\/strong> (a once — and future? — savior of the company), and money men Raymond Brooks<\/strong> and Daniel Silvers<\/strong>. Among current board members only former Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong> CEO Phil Satre<\/strong> and erstwhile Nevada<\/strong> governor Bob Miller<\/strong> escape Ader’s wrath. With a 3% stock position, Ader might seem to be holding a weak hand but he contends that IGT leadership is barely invested in the company at all: less than 1%, exclusive of options. And 5W Public Relations<\/strong> is aggressively shopping Ader around to prospective interviewers.
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Ader’s campaign platform<\/strong> would ground IGT’s Gulfstream V<\/strong> jet, for starters, emphasize expansion into Latin \"\"America<\/strong> and Asia<\/strong>; re-concentrate the company on selling ‘boxes’; curtail the scope of R&D to highly profitable product lines; raise prices. Calling the last three-and-a-half years at IGT “indefensible,” Ader points to a 20% decline in share value and a concomitant IGT underperformance compared to the NASDAQ<\/strong> and S&P<\/strong> averages. The Great Recession caught IGT in mid-pivot from boxes to server-based gaming. By the time SBG was finally ready for market, casinos were no longer in a position to swap out entire slot floors. Hart pushed the company toward social media and online gambling<\/a>, a change of course<\/a> that steered IGT right into Ader’s trap. His bill of indictment cites “failure to focus on the core slot machine and systems business … A lack of casino gaming industry experience in IGT\u2019s Board and executive management ranks<\/a> [and] a series of costly non-strategic acquisitions<\/em>.” Ader’s bullet points are made by real bullets, too. Hart’s dubious acquisitions include $113 million for defunct<\/a> Entraction Holdings<\/strong> and the controversial half-billion dollars spent to purchase<\/a> Double Down Interactive<\/strong>. Although he stops short of calling for Hart’s head on a platter, asking simply for fiercer board oversight (“Our nominees also intend to work closely with Ms. Hart” is the ominous phrasing), Ader is only too happy to cite the negative share-price performance of Telocity<\/strong>, bankrupt<\/a> Excite@Home<\/strong>, and Pinnacle Systems<\/strong> during her presidencies, finally piling on her role in the abortive<\/a> Scott Thompson<\/strong> tenure at Yahoo<\/strong>. Shareholders are rarely inclined to upset the applecart, so maybe a strong 1Q13<\/a>, buoyed by slot-route sales in Illinois<\/strong> and Double Down’s rising numbers (it was predicted to go the abyssal route of Zynga<\/strong> and hasn’t) will rescue Hart from Ader’s bite.<\/p>\n

\"\"Although his District of Columbia project<\/strong> is exempt from property taxes<\/a> by dint of sitting on federal land, Donald Trump<\/strong> still remains liable for $3 million “possessory interest tax” annually. That was, however, more than the orange-coiffed casino shill could bear. He tried to scam a free ride off of Washington, D.C.<\/strong> Needless to say, that would spur a stampede of other businessmen demanding that their possessory-interest imposts be refunded. And, equally unsurprisingly, city fathers told Trump to pay The Man. As The Associated Press<\/strong> obliquely observed, the spectacle of a self-proclaimed zillionaire cadging for a handout found little sympathy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rumbles of mutiny against International Game Technology CEO Patti Hart have been growing in volume for quite some time. Those growls rose to a shout today with an e-mail blast from The Ader Group, soliciting shareholder proxies for the March … 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":[28,42,14,7,29,58,22,92,31,8,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10397"}],"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=10397"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27145,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10397\/revisions\/27145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}