At a time when company owners are either booted by investors for letting their companies fall into the hands of bottom-feeding creditors or competitors, these epic bailouts look like throwbacks to another era.
Cut off from bank loans and traditional financing during its early days, the casino industry relied on the wealth of a small group of insiders who understood its peculiarities.
The Fertittas, who learned the business from their father, have always viewed their industry as a long-term growth opportunity and chafed under the quarterly profit-driven demands of Wall Street.
It’s up to bondholders to decide whether the Fertittas know more about their business than anyone else and should be running the show.
If the economy doesn’t recover as Station expects it will, that $244 million, just like Adelson’s billion-dollar investment, will disappear.
Analyst Barbara Cappaert of bond research firm KDP Investment Advisors says such cash infusions by owners are unusual in this downturn. Many struggling companies have offered bondholders discounted notes to reduce interest costs but have put no new cash, as equity, into their companies. Read The Full Article Here At LasVegasSun.com
Clark County has ordered MGM Mirage to verify that CityCenter’s towers are structurally sound.
The order, in a letter Monday from Development Services Director Ron Lynn to MGM Mirage Vice President Bill Ham, came six months after significant structural defects were found at the Harmon, one of seven buildings simultaneously rising at the company’s $9 billion project.
After the engineer of record on the project raised concerns, the county determined that 15 floors of reinforcing steel at the Harmon had been improperly installed by subcontractor Pacific Coast Steel, which is overseen by CityCenter general contractor Perini Building Co.
The problems were repeatedly missed by third-party private inspector Converse Consultants, hired by MGM Mirage to ensure the complicated tasks were properly executed.
Though the inspectors employed by Converse Consultants — Scott Edberg and Joseph Glenn Laurente — had not worked on any other CityCenter buildings, the county nonetheless wants MGM Mirage to reassure the public that all parts of the project inspected by the firm are free of structural problems.
Converse is performing the bulk of the private inspection work at CityCenter. The county’s Development Services Department oversees the work of such third-party inspectors.
“At this point in time we have no reason to think that there’s an issue at any other parts of CityCenter,” said Assistant County Manager Phil Rosenquist. “We just want to be sure.” Read The Full Article Click Here
