{"id":3352,"date":"2010-05-28T12:30:11","date_gmt":"2010-05-28T20:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=3352"},"modified":"2011-04-26T15:51:58","modified_gmt":"2011-04-26T23:51:58","slug":"the-bad-guys-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/the-bad-guys-won\/","title":{"rendered":"The bad guys won"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Applying yet another tongue bath to the management and bankers who drove Station Casinos<\/strong> into a brick wall at top speed, bankruptcy Judge Gregg Zive<\/strong> has decreed Fertitta Gaming<\/strong>‘s $772 million* stalking-horse bid “an adequate floor<\/a>” for the auction of 11 Station properties<\/a>, a tribal casino-management contract plus unspecified real estate. (As best I can make out, nobody except Station knows what undeveloped land will go into the auction and what lurks nearby in a “LandCo.”) Zive also rolled over for a sugar-pill provision that takes the massive land assemblage surrounding Wild Wild West<\/strong> off the auction block and into the lap of the Station\/Deutsche Bank<\/strong> coalition that’s calling the shots in the reorganization.<\/p>\n

(* — I’m un-correcting a correction because it turns out my memory is accurate but the R-J<\/em>‘s reportage was not.)<\/p>\n

Never mind that he gave his blessing to a bid that was, in effect, negotiated between Station CEO Frank J. Fertitta<\/strong> III and Fertitta Gaming Managing Member Frank J. Fertitta III; Zive feared that letting someone else put in the opening bid would have a destabilizing effect on the company and the local economy. (With Station’s financial bow planes locked in “dive,” stability is not the foremost quality one ascribes to the company at the moment.)<\/p>\n

At this rate, the Aug. 6 auction will be a mere formality, and Fertitta Gaming and its sugar daddy, Colony Capital<\/strong>, will (re)acquire roughly two-thirds of the assets of a company that once brought $5.4 billion — plus preexisting debt, for the equivalent of chump change. In the process Station will go from having been taken private at a preposterously high cash-flow multiple to been done so (again) at a ludicrously low one. The Fertitta family couldn’t have gotten a luckier set of breaks if they had scripted this entire scenario themselves.<\/p>\n

While Zive has made<\/strong> some rulings of dubious wisdom in the Station case, this wasn’t one of them<\/a>. There are lots of people who have beefs with Station. However, the ongoing grudge match between the Fertittas and the Culinary Union<\/strong> isn’t germane to the bankruptcy and Zive was right to show the Culinary the door. Sometimes the union just doesn’t know when to butt out. Besides, even if the management-led reorganization plan were to fall completely to pieces, thanks to a reconciliation with the Greenspuns, the Fertittas will still be safely at the helm of Green Valley Ranch<\/strong> and Aliante Station<\/strong>. As such, they and the Culinary can look forward to whacking each other around for years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Applying yet another tongue bath to the management and bankers who drove Station Casinos into a brick wall at top speed, bankruptcy Judge Gregg Zive has decreed Fertitta Gaming‘s $772 million* stalking-horse bid “an adequate floor” for the auction of … 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":[88,28,78,57,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352"}],"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=3352"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6419,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352\/revisions\/6419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}