{"id":5086,"date":"2010-11-08T16:23:55","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T00:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=5086"},"modified":"2010-11-08T16:25:41","modified_gmt":"2010-11-09T00:25:41","slug":"harrahs-lousiana-purchase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/harrahs-lousiana-purchase\/","title":{"rendered":"Harrah’s Lousiana Purchase?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"According to an S&G<\/em> source, Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong> — soon to be<\/a> Caesars Entertainment<\/strong> — is supposedly laying the groundwork for a purchase of L’Auberge du Lac<\/strong> from Pinnacle Entertainment<\/strong>. Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman<\/strong> was supposedly on-property last month and L’Auberge’s latest general manager is Geno M. Iafrate<\/strong>, an old Harrah’s hand<\/a>. While Pinnacle CEO Anthony Sanfilippo<\/strong> would have been familiar with Iafrate from his own tenure with Harrah’s, my source says Iafrate was chosen to help smooth the transition to a new corporate regime.<\/p>\n

Harrah’s bailed out of Lake Charles<\/strong> four years ago<\/a>, its operations shattered by Hurricane Rita<\/strong>. The grand strategy was to trade its assets there with Pinnacle’s ones in Biloxi<\/strong>, thereby facilitating the expansion of Grand Casino Biloxi<\/strong> into a Margaritaville<\/strong>-branded megaresort. Then Loveman went all LBO-crazy, poof went the Margaritaville budget and Harrah’s finds itself having sacrificed the lucrative Lake Charles market for a mess of pottage. Pinnacle, after sacking CEO Dan Lee<\/strong>, has been throwing projects overboard like crazy and, as somebody else put it, finds itself “owning a very expensively procured parking lot” in Atlantic City<\/strong>. L’Auberge is an enormous contributor to the Pinnacle bottom line so you’d think the company would either have to be A)<\/strong> more cash-desperate than previously thought or B)<\/strong> stood to make a killing by unloading it.<\/p>\n

With Harrah’s shares set to hit NASDAQ<\/strong> at a lowly $15-$17 apiece<\/a>, Loveman could still have $610 million in “mad money,” though he’s got so many projects on his wish list that he’d blow through that and then some if he pursued them all. However, coming off a third quarter in which revenues were flat, it’s understandable that the CEO might be feeling some “seller’s remorse” over having forfeited the Lake Charles spigot to Pinnacle. Also, given its overexposure to both Atlantic City and Las Vegas<\/strong>, a Louisiana<\/strong> purchase would fit hand-in-glove with the geographic diversification Harrah’s is currently pursuing. To the extent that Loveman’s knee-jerk business strategies make sense, this one certainly does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to an S&G source, Harrah’s Entertainment — soon to be Caesars Entertainment — is supposedly laying the groundwork for a purchase of L’Auberge du Lac from Pinnacle Entertainment. Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman was supposedly on-property last month and L’Auberge’s … 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":[23,28,7,84,35,30,9,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086"}],"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=5086"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5089,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086\/revisions\/5089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}