{"id":15826,"date":"2015-04-06T11:48:50","date_gmt":"2015-04-06T19:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=15826"},"modified":"2015-04-06T13:02:38","modified_gmt":"2015-04-06T21:02:38","slug":"wynn-everett-halted-board-election-blasted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wynn-everett-halted-board-election-blasted\/","title":{"rendered":"Wynn Everett halted, board election blasted"},"content":{"rendered":"

It looks like Wynn Resorts<\/strong> jumped the gun<\/a>, purchasing land from the MBTA<\/strong> without getting the go-ahead from\u00a0Secretary of Energy &\u00a0Environmental Affairs Matthew Beaton<\/strong> \"Massachusetts<\/a>beforehand. Although Wynn was found to be\u00a0\u201csuitable on substantially all of the 59 conditions,\u201d construction work has to be stopped<\/a> while Beaton reviews the MBTA land transfer, suggesting that the acreage be placed in escrow in the meantime. He’s also ruled that Wynn must coordinate its vehicular-access plans with Boston<\/strong>‘s renovation of roads in the Sullivan Square<\/strong> area, a federally funded project that didn’t anticipate having a casino megaresort plopped down next door. That could be a very thorny negotiation, if it happens, seeing as Beantown Mayor Martin J. Walsh<\/strong> has dedicated every fiber of his being to undermining the Wynn project. As Beaton understated,\u00a0\u201cBuilding consensus with parties engaged in active litigation will be a significant challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beaton is also concerned with noise- and traffic-abatement issues related to the casino. Wynn execs trying to spin his actions as a plus<\/a> for their development, even as this pushes the opening in 2018. Wynn Everett<\/strong> President Robert DeSalvio<\/strong> released a statement that said,\u00a0\u201cWe are disappointed that the new jobs and new tax revenues that would have helped so many people in the Commonwealth will be delayed\u00a0…\u00a0We\u2019re gratified that after thousands of pages of analysis and years of review, the Secretary has generally endorsed all of our mitigation plans.\u201d At least Wynn didn’t get spanked the way the MBTA and Department of Transportation<\/strong> were for the way they handled the sale.<\/p>\n

Closer to home,\u00a0Institutional Shareholder Services<\/strong> celebrated Easter by delivering a withering pan<\/a> of Wynn Resorts’ upcoming board election. Its verdict: Vote down all three candidates, Elaine Wynn<\/strong> included. Damning Wynn’s corporate governance as “among the worst” in the U.S., ISS wrote that Ms. Wynn\u00a0\u201calso bears responsibility for the manifest \"Elaine<\/a>failures of governance incidental to her arguments but nonetheless highlighted by this proxy contest … [Stockholders]\u00a0may be best served by voicing their dissatisfaction with the status quo\u2014and all nominees\u2019 complicity in it\u2014by voting on the management card to withhold votes from both management nominees.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the critical concerns of the Wynn Resorts board is that, should Ms. Wynn prevail in a lawsuit against her ex-husband and increase the volume of shares she is allowed to sell, it will trigger a “change of control” provision that would force the company to buy back the stock at a premium. ISS was scathing in its comments on how this came about, damning the board for\u00a0\u201cstunning failure of judgment by the independent directors who approved these indentures, agreeing to this large a financial risk and simultaneously ceding\u2014not delegating, ceding\u2014control to two individual shareholders who, it now concedes in its proxy filings, may not be able to manage that same risk themselves if their shareholder agreement is dissolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

ISS expressed frustration not only with a lack of transparency at Wynncore<\/a>, a nebulous plan of succession and\u00a0also with “excessive aircraft use” by Steve Wynn<\/strong>. Contrary to Ms. Wynn’s protestations of independence and willingness to speak truth to power,\u00a0\u201cThere appears to be no daylight between Elaine Wynn and the rest of the board on tolerating weak governance practices, poor pay practices, or an overall corporate governance profile that ranks among the worst, not the best, of U.S. companies.\u201d She was further faulted for emerging only recently as a voice for diversity on the board.<\/p>\n

ValueEdge Advisors<\/strong> Vice Chairwoman Nell Minow<\/strong> summarized the scorched-earth ISS report as, \u2018All you can do is embarrass them, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re telling you to do.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like Wynn Resorts jumped the gun, purchasing land from the MBTA without getting the go-ahead from\u00a0Secretary of Energy &\u00a0Environmental Affairs Matthew Beaton beforehand. Although Wynn was found to be\u00a0\u201csuitable on substantially all of the 59 conditions,\u201d construction work … 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":[112,32,100,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15826"}],"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=15826"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15835,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15826\/revisions\/15835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}