Caesars’ bankruptcy proceedings are becoming increasingly messy, as the proceedings that are legal it threaten its long-term future.
Caesars Entertainment has failed in its bid to possess litigation dismissed by a Delaware judge this week, despite arguing that the ‘material uncertainty’ engendered by the lawsuit against it ‘raises substantial question about the business’s ability to carry on as a going concern.’
It is the casino giant has used foreboding language whenever explaining its long-term future, as it continues to battle its second-lien bondholders over a bankruptcy case that is increasingly complex.
Caesars Entertainment desires to put its operating that is main unit Caesars Entertainment Operating Corp. (CEOC), through Chapter 11 proceedings in purchase to restructure its industry-high debt.
However, the second-lien bondholders are suing, claiming that lots of CEOC’s assets were fraudulently transferred to Caesars Entertainment along with other subsidiaries for the advantage of its controlling private equity backers.
We Come to Bury Caesars
This left CEOC with distressed assets as well as an inability to spend it $18 billion debt load, they argue, while placing the most assets that are valuable of this reach of the bondholders. They also accuse the business of creating a ‘good’ Caesars and a ‘bad’ Caesars; one to hold the properties that are valuable the other to keep the debt.
Caesars argues that it paid good value for the assets taken from the operating product, including Caesars’s World number of Poker rights, the Octavius Tower, Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Harrah’s New Orleans, Bally’s Las Vegas and the Total Rewards customer commitment program, among others.
Solicitors for the casino giant have expected that the parent business, Caesars Entertainment, be protected from legal action during the course of the bankruptcy filing of CEOC. But on the judge rejected a bid to dismiss or stay the action wednesday.
Beware the Ides of March
It is been a couple that is bad of for Caesars. Last week Judge Benjamin Goldgar, who is hearing the case in Chicago, appointed a court-ordered examiner with unlimited time and budget to investigate the asset transfers and any resulting conflicts of interest.
The initial request for an examiner had come from Caesars itself, but only in relation to seven transfers challenged by the lawsuit. A spokesman for Caesars declined to comment on the decision.
Then, at a hearing of the Gaming Control Board, the ongoing company had been quizzed by board members on the cessation of retirement payments to ex-employees. It’s recognized that 63 previous workers, from executive level down, are owed nearly $33 million in retirement re payments as an ingredient of the plan that is supplemental company inherited through previous purchases.
Caesars’ attorney Steven Pesner told the board that the business was ‘looking into’ the matter, but also warned that it was facing ‘the largest and a lot of complex bankruptcy in a generation.’
Carl Icahn Compares Taj Mahal Union Leaders To Mobsters
Carl Icahn stated that union leaders are making use of tactics similar to those of prepared crime. (Image: Huffington Post)
Carl Icahn has put serious cash into the Trump Taj Mahal in order to conserve the Atlantic City casino, but there is been one group he was not in the best of terms with, to put it lightly: Unite-HERE Local 54, the union that represents workers at the casino.
Icahn and the union have had plenty of harsh words for one another on the past few months, but Icahn may have just ratcheted up the rhetoric even further.
Letter Calls Casino Contributions Excessive
The Trump Taj Mahal’s future owner called out the union’s leadership, saying that they were essentially extorting money from the casino by picketing the building and attempting to hold on to their previous health plan in a letter sent to members of the union.
‘ on the last five years, although the Taj Mahal went bankrupt not simply once, but twice, your Unite-HERE health plan has made $140 million in net income,’ Icahn published in the letter. ‘Yet even contrary to the backdrop of your manager bankruptcy that is entering the next time in 5 years, your union leadership continues to demand that the Taj make exorbitant contributions to the profitable Unite-HERE heath plan, or else suffer labor unrest.’
Icahn earlier won a ruling from a bankruptcy court that determined he could break existing contracts with the union, which would enable him to end the current medical health insurance and retirement plans that union workers agreed to.
Icahn would instead have employees just take subsidies and apply for health care plans under the exchanges create by the low-cost Care Act. The union is appealing this ruling, but Icahn says that if they should win that appeal, he would likely close the casino.
Icahn Says Tactics Remind Him of ‘Bygone Era’
In the page, Icahn went on to compare the strategies of union leaders to those of unscrupulous characters of yesteryear.
‘It all reminds me personally of the bygone age when organized crime would demand grocers pay for protection, or suffer bricks being thrown through their shop windows,’ he penned. ‘ The only real difference right here is that instead of throwing bricks through the Taj Mahal’s windows, your union instead organizes strikes, picketing, boycotts and other attacks to deter clients from patronizing the Taj Mahal.’
That picketing has continued in present months. Last Friday, union members demonstrated again, the time that is fifth have done so since the bankruptcy judge’s decision final October.
‘Carl Icahn has determined to run the Taj Mahal into the ground while he’s waiting to go on it over,’ said union president Bob McDevitt. ‘we are saying we’re maybe not going to take this any longer. today’
Icahn Approved to Take Over Taj Mahal
Last Thursday, a bankruptcy judge approved an agenda which will see Icahn dominate Trump Entertainment Resorts, the parent company of the Taj Mahal. Icahn will swap $286 million worth of debt he has into the ongoing company as a swap for that ownership when the company emerges from bankruptcy.
‘The Taj will remain available,’ stated US Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross at a hearing last week. ‘And it’ll be an effective venture.’
That approval came just days after the casino reached a contract with Donald Trump that will allow the Taj Mahal to help keep the Trump name attached to it for the foreseeable future. Trump and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, have been fighting to have their family title removed through the venue.
Assemblyman Pushes For Nevada Lottery
Assemblyman Harvey Munford, who has a better chance of winning the lottery than he does of establishing one in Nevada. (Image: yogonet.com)
Assemblyman Harvey Munford desires to bring the lottery to Nevada. Yes, that is right: the gambling capital of the globe won’t have a lottery, and that is in big component to the gambling industry for the gambling capital of the planet, which doesn’t want the competition. It is even written to the state’s constitution: no lotteries! Almost 30 attempts that are legislative establish a lottery in Nevada since house of fun 3d slots 1975 have failed.
However, Munford was undeterred as he addressed the Assembly Legislative Operations and Elections Committee this arguing that voters, rather than the casino industry, should be given the chance to decide the issue week.
‘ This is a loss of revenue for our state that could be helping the education of our younger constituents,’ he said. ‘It would achieve this without increasing taxes.’
Very Long Odds
Members of the nevada press have noted, wryly, that Munford has about as much potential for making this happen as he has of… well… winning the lottery.
Since, as we have already established, Nevada does not have a lottery, that would place his estimated chances at zilch, which, in fairness, is slightly even worse compared to those living across the border in California or Arizona.
Nevada’s prohibition of lotteries was established at statehood in 1864 and has remained sacrosanct since, although it was amended by voters in 1990 to allow charity lotteries. Munford’s Assembly Joint Resolution No. 6 wants to scrap the ban and embrace a state lottery as a way of supporting education that is public promoting the ‘health and welfare of senior residents.’
‘I know it’s been introduced a few sessions since I’ve been up here, and every time it’s always died. It is never been able to go forward,’ said Munford, who’s due to step down from office at the end of this present legislative session. ‘I just said, ‘I’m gonna give it another shot.’
Conservatives Aghast
But, any legislation that proposes amending the constitution is going to need an amount that is huge of. The bill would need to pass not only this session of the Legislature but the 2017 session also, before going to public vote in 2018.
And there is opposition not just from the casino industry but also from conservative associations. Conservative activist Janine Hansen is aghast at the consequence that a lottery might have in state that has one slot machine for each ten residents. ‘It’s devastating for family members to deal having a person who has a gambling addiction,’ she stated. ‘It destroys the family completely.’
Should the issue ever get to vote that is public nevertheless, it may possibly pass. A 2009 survey revealed about 70 per cent of voters were in favor. A lottery would bring $48 million an in profit for the state, research suggests year.
Judge Denies Ivey’s Motion To Dismiss Borgata Lawsuit
The Borgata’s lawsuit against Phil Ivey is going to be allowed to continue. (Image: pokerground.com)
Phil Ivey may still come out on ultimately top up against the Borgata in the lawsuit over the $9.6 million he won at baccarat using an advantage sorting technique.
But at least for now, a judge has said that the instance has enough merit that it shouldn’t be tossed out of court entirely, meaning the battle over those millions could continue for some time still.
District Court Judge Noel Lawrence Hillman denied a motion from Ivey’s lawyers to dismiss the costs against Ivey and other defendant Cheng Yin Sun, allowing the case to continue but giving few clues as to which side could have top of the turn in the battle that is legal.
The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa alleges that Ivey cheated in a few sessions in which he played baccarat at their casino, including costs of fraud, breach of contract and violations of RICO racketeering statutes.
Ivey Used Edge Sorting to Beat Casino at Baccarat
A dispute is concerned by the case over four sessions of baccarat that Ivey played in 2012, during which he won the $9.6 million that the Borgata is now wanting to recover from him. Ivey utilized an approach known as edge sorting, by which he obtained conditions for the game where he was able to tell whether a card was low or high also when it had been face down.
That provided him a massive advantage over the casino in a game where the house typically has a little side.
This was possible because certainly one of the conditions involved utilizing an shoe that is eight-deck up of a certain kind of Borgata playing cards: purple-backed cards manufactured by Gemaco. Unknown to the casino, this particular brand had backs that have been perhaps not perfectly cut; when Ivey then asked the dealer to turn high cards 180 degrees, ostensibly for superstitious reasons, he was then able to distinguish those cards even face down.