{"id":15751,"date":"2015-03-19T10:01:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T18:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=15751"},"modified":"2019-01-29T10:50:39","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T18:50:39","slug":"whither-mccartney-panic-at-caesars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/whither-mccartney-panic-at-caesars\/","title":{"rendered":"Whither McCartney?; Distress at Caesars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, Vegas Tripping<\/strong> reported the departure<\/a> of Thomas McCartney<\/strong> from The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas<\/strong>. In its press release, the Cosmo went beyond the \"trop-tom-mccartney\"<\/a>neutral sort of verbiage reserved for such pronouncements, saying that “Mr. McCartney did not step down as the result of any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to the Company’s operations, policies or practices.” There was no mention of “lovely parting gifts” but that’s still a nice note to put in Mr. McCartney’s personnel file.<\/p>\n

The question is, where does McCartney go next? It’s tempting to think that his next stop is Resorts World Las Vegas<\/strong>, but McCartney’s specialization is turning a property around, not developing one. True, Resorts World LV is stuck in the mud but that seems to have more to do with company finances than anything McCartney could remedy. Genting Group<\/strong> finally filed construction permits<\/a>, which could mean they’re finally ready to build … but I can think of projects for which Caesars Entertainment<\/strong> and Station Casinos<\/strong> filed permits years ago that never got constructed, so I’m still taking that June start date for Resorts World with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n

Caesars needs to trim the fat from its budget in order pay down debt but seems to be doing that quite well already. The Riviera<\/strong> has been sentenced to death. SLS Las Vegas<\/strong> is \"SLS<\/a>perceived as struggling, but would the combination of McCartney and CEO Scott Kreeger<\/strong> be redundant? (Kreeger was briefly Mr. Fixit at Revel<\/strong>.) Lastly, there’s James Packer<\/strong>‘s planned Vegas megaresort, but with Andrew Pascal<\/strong> and Rob Oseland<\/strong> aboard, it’s got more chiefs than Indians already. The U.S. casino most drastically in need of new management is tailspinning Trump Taj Mahal<\/strong>, but Carl Icahn<\/strong>‘s got his own people for that, if and when his takeover of the property is consummated. But whoever wins Revel is going to need somebody to be their casino wizard, so McCartney could just bide his time and wait for his next employer to come a-courtin’.<\/p>\n

* Caesars ran up the distress flag this week, in an effort to stymie debtor lawsuits. The litigation over the company’s controversial asset transfers creates “material uncertainty,” Caesars complained, a cloud over the company<\/a> that\u00a0“raises substantial doubt about the \"caesarscasino_1\"<\/a>company’s ability to continue as a going concern.” Now, either Caesars is trying to create drama where none exists or it’s in worse shape than we thought. (New York<\/strong>‘s Gaming Location Board<\/strong> said last month that the prospect of a Caesars bankruptcy killed the company’s chances in the Empire State.)<\/p>\n

The argument carried no weight with a Delaware<\/strong> corporate-law court, which declined\u00a0to quash<\/a>\u00a0Wilmington Savings Fund Society<\/strong>‘s lawsuit over the division of the company into “good Caesars,” shielded from bankruptcy, and “bad Caesars,” devaluing the latter. At issue is the compensation the company paid itself<\/a> for prime assets like Total Rewards<\/strong> and Caesars Interactive<\/strong> when it moved them into Caesars Acquisition Co<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Caesars wanted the case heard in New York City<\/strong>, contending that the debt contracts mandated the case be tried in Gotham, but the court wasn’t having any of that<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cThe courthouse in Wilmington<\/strong> is separated from Pennsylvania Station<\/strong> in Manhattan<\/strong> by a five-minute walk and 125 miles of shiny steel rails, which may be traversed in the comfort of the business section of an Acela<\/strong> train in an hour and a half,\u201d wrote Judge Sam Glasscock<\/strong>. Caesars, however, gets a second bite of the apple next month in Chicago<\/strong>, where it hopes to have this and other litigation shut down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, Vegas Tripping reported the departure of Thomas McCartney from The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. In its press release, the Cosmo went beyond the neutral sort of verbiage reserved for such pronouncements, saying that “Mr. McCartney did not … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,82,66,164,120,7,58,96,101,55,195,57,9,169],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15751"}],"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=15751"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23407,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15751\/revisions\/23407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}