Steve Wynn sat down with CNBC on Thursday for a lengthy (for TV, anyhow) chat that is available in three parts of 5, 7 and 2 minutes respectively. You can click on the image above to watch the first part and go to CNBC.Com to see the rest.
The important stuff:
* In Part 1, he backs off on the notion of moving his HQ to Macau, redefining it as "splitting his headquarters" and that he'd be spending more time there. He says he didn't mean for people to "jump to the conclusion that we're leaving Las Vegas." Now where did we get THAT ridiculous notion from? Could it be because he told CNBC in April, when asked whether he would move his HQ to China, "It is not improbable or unrealistic. ... I'm seriously considering that and I am weighing the implications of how I engineer that."
* In Part 2, he basically exposes the instinct that ended his marriage in talking about how people of his generation are desperate to recapture youth or forestall old age. "They're like me," he said of many of his customers. "They want to grow old ungracefully and, at any price, cling to immaturity." This is something to boast about? Really?
* In Part 3, he says the coming room renovations at Wynn Las Vegas that begin this summer and will last until March 2011 will cost $87 million or, interestingly, $18 per room per night occupied.
You can watch Parts 2 and 3 and read the written piece that accompanies them on CNBC's site. The article includes some stuff not heard on the video, including Wynn worrying about what happens if his cocktail waitresses gain a couple of pounds. He also tells CNBC that Encore Beach Club servers stand to make more than $100,000 a year, although there's no word whether he'll force them to share tips with the pool boys.
2 comments:
Oh thank heavens! Here I thought we'd be without His Grace's presence for much of the year! Thank you, dear leader, for not moving. Wait, dear leader is North Korea. Got my Asian nations mixed up!
Wynn is really beginning to irritate the hell out of me. The less I see of him the better.
And that ludicrous beach club along the Boulevard totally ruins his prestigious Encore establishment. It looks like they moved part of the Orleans from Trop to the Strip!
The meat of his interview is very good especially the part about depreciation and amortization. Some investors really view that as money that can be taken off the table as oppose to money that has to be put back into the enterprise.
I would have loved to have actually heard the comments about the cocktail waitresses.
The stuff about his concern about growing old gracefully was distressing.
SG
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