{"id":17832,"date":"2016-03-03T13:35:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T21:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=17832"},"modified":"2021-07-12T06:27:44","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T14:27:44","slug":"new-peril-at-taj-packer-puts-the-brakes-on-alon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/new-peril-at-taj-packer-puts-the-brakes-on-alon\/","title":{"rendered":"New peril at Taj; Packer puts the brakes on Alon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump Taj Mahal<\/strong> will have to continue limping forward on life support, as Carl Icahn<\/strong> is welshing on his promises of financial rescue. Uncle Carl now says that the promised \"Taj$100 million reinvestment\u00a0is on hold<\/a>, pending the outcome of a vote on casinos in northern New\u00a0Jersey<\/strong>.\u00a0\u201cAlthough I had planned to invest up to $100 million in the Taj, just as I made substantial investments at the Tropicana<\/strong>, obviously it would not be judicious to proceed with those investments while gaming in north Jersey is an open issue, and we will have to wait to see the outcome of those proposals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The most Icahn will commit to his new baby is up to $20 million in capex maintenance for a casino-hotel that, by all accounts, badly needs it. Perhaps the pounding taken by his hedge fund last year<\/a> accounts for the newly bewhiskered Icahn’s skittishness.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0We had planning to urge a “no” vote on a Maine<\/strong> initiative to award a casino license to sleazy gaming speculator<\/a> Shawn Scott<\/strong>. Turns out it won’t be necessary. In a characteristic Scott blunder, 55,776 petition signatures were disqualified, leaving him well short of the\u00a061,123 needed to make November’s ballot.\u201cWe\u2019re not equipped to make a judgment if this is criminal activity.\u00a0Some of the biggest swaths of invalid signatures were people who weren\u2019t registered to vote …\u00a0It was clear just by looking at the documents that somebody had a stack of petitions and somebody was just notarizing them,\u201d said Secretary of State Mark Dunlap<\/strong>. Scott has 10 days to appeal Dunlap’s remarkably unsurprising decision.<\/p>\n

* Speaking of non-suprises, Alon<\/strong>\u00a0is on “pause.”<\/a>\u00a0Wall Street<\/strong> had been waving caution flags about this James Packer<\/strong> project and it has been tripped up by what an Australian \"Jamesnewspaper described as “weakened American debt markets.”\u00a0\u201cThey kept repeating there is no deadline for a deal especially given the high yield credit market is pretty much closed at the moment,\u201d said a Crown Resorts<\/strong> insider and Alon CEO Andrew Pascal<\/strong> confirmed\u00a0\u201cThere is no question that the environment is difficult for everyone at the moment, but deals are still getting done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps so, but it looks more and more like this particular deal won’t get done without a bigger equity commitment from Packer. Indeed, he seems to have reached the same conclusion, trying to sell down his Crown\u00a0holdings. Unfortunately for Packer, his love affair with Las Vegas<\/strong> continues to be an unrequited one: His timing for entering the market is always off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump Taj Mahal will have to continue limping forward on life support, as Carl Icahn is welshing on his promises of financial rescue. Uncle Carl now says that the promised $100 million reinvestment\u00a0is on hold, pending the outcome of a … 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":[23,82,26,96,147,9,21,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17832"}],"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=17832"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29835,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17832\/revisions\/29835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}