Divorce Makes Elaine Wynn a Billionaire

We knew she was now a very independently wealthy woman, of course, but with this year's Forbes American billionaires list out yesterday, there's Steve Wynn's former wife chiming in at No. 382 with $1.05 billion on "hotels."

Steve sits on the same list at No. 205 with $1.9 billion (on "hotels, casinos"), which means that had he not divorced Elaine he'd be No. 111. (He was No. 141 in 2009.) That would have put him ahead of -- but instead he's behind -- Phil Ruffin (No. 182 with $2b on "casinos, real estate") and Donald Trump (No. 153 with $2.4b on "real estate"). Interestingly, despite shedding a billion to Elaine, Wynn's only down $400 million from last year. Why, exactly, is he so bitter at Obama?

Other notable Las Vegas-related folks:

* Sheldon Adelson ($14.7 billion) has rebounded to No. 13 thanks to Singapore and quipped: "I'm too old to be a kid, so call me the 'comeback adolescent.'" He was No. 26 last year.
* Frank Fertitta III (No. 365 with $1.1 billion) and Lorenzo Fertitta (No. 385 with $1 billion) just made the list pretty much on the value of the UFC alone, given that Station Casinos is in bankruptcy and all.
* Fontainebleau owner Carl Icahn is No. 24 with $11 billion on "leveraged buyouts"
* Kirk Kerkorian chimes in at No. 119 with $2.9 billion

Meanwhile, Wallet Pop has countered the Forbes list -- although Forbes is linking directly to this -- with its list of the 10 worst celebrity business owners. Heidi Fleiss is No. 7 and Paris Hilton is No. 1. Far less scientific, but certainly entertaining nonetheless.

Wynn on Buying Bellagio: "Perhaps"

For those of you fascinated by Steve Wynn -- and who isn't? -- my pal and colleague Jon Ralston nabbed The Man (does Wynn have any commonly used nicknames?) on his "Face To Face" interview show for two half-hour episodes this week. The first, focused on gaming business matters, aired today on Las Vegas One and is now available online through the Las Vegas Sun's website because Ralston is also a Sun columnist.

There was lots in here and, aside from Charlie Rose, Wynn doesn't sit for lengthy TV interviews with anyone other than Ralston. And you know he likes Jon because, just as he does with me at least once or twice an interview, he chastizes the host in that loving way of his. (This time it comes in the start of segment 2 when Ralston compares Michael Milken to Bernie Madoff. Hoo boy.)

But what did he SAY, you wonder? Well, I encourage you to go watch, but here's some of the stuff I picked out:

1. Reacquiring Bellagio or Mirage: The first time Ralston asked, the answer is, "Well, I guess it depends on price." Then there's some discussion of what a great board Wynn Resorts has, and how they might be able to "be helpful to people on the Strip who perhaps would be better served by unbundling." I love that. Can you imagine? "Hello, Kirk? Remember that stuff you bought out from under me? Well, since I'm such a nice guy, let me help you by taking it back for a song. No, no. Don't thank me! Nothin' to it! What are friends for?" Ralston asked point-blank if Wynn wanted Bellagio or Mirage back and Wynn replied: "The operative word is perhaps. Maybe. Under certain circumstances. Conditional." Conditional on maybe Kirk Kerkorian rolling over in the grave he hasn't even begun inhabiting yet, perhaps? Wynn also went on a bit about the Mandalay Bay-Luxor-Excalibur in the same breath, but I couldn't make heads or tails of whether he was thinking about buying them or simply taking the opportunity -- helpful guy that he is -- to point out another way that the MGM gang spent too much.

2. Unbundling like it's 1999. As he did in my most recent interview with him, Wynn endorsed the "unbundling" of MGM Mirage, citing Vegas' storied history of "smart groups of guys fightin’ it out, getting the best deals by having to compete for advantages, entrepreneurial zeal." But I liked this one bit where he said, "I think an unbundling of the Mirage Company is a good idea." Hmmm. Wasn't that what we used to call it back in the day? A slip?

3. Madoff is worse than Hitler? As mentioned earlier, Ralston got Wynn going about Milken and Madoff. Wynn was explaining that Mike Milken, whose junk bonds financed Mirage, was his mentor in terms of explaining why having proper capitalization keeps companies afloat in rough times. Ralston wanted to challenge him on Milken but steps in it about Madoff, sending Wynn over the edge. Wynn defended Milken and said he'll go down as "the most important figure since Bernard Baruch on Wall Street." As for Madoff, whom Wynn never heard of until his scheme collapsed: "That’s one of the worst people in the history of the world. This man destroyed, over a 10-year period, destroyed his friends, women, charities, folks with their case money. How this guy didn’t get killed by somebody is beyond me." Yikes! Not sure what "case money" is but I listened to it a few times and that's what he said.

4. Good MGM, Bad MGM. The nicest thing Wynn can say about MGM Mirage is that there are "very smart people" there who did what everyone in the business world was doing at the time. He also said that MGM with CityCenter and Las Vegas Sands with Macau "undertook projects of such overwhelming scope and ambition that they have no real precedent or historical models to rely upon. They were groundbreaking products." Except that he doesn't mean any of that in a good way. "When you start a project without having enough money to finish it," Wynn said, "I find that to be [long, long, long pause] mystifying. I don’t know what to say except" and here I must simply try to SHOW you what he did.


He plays with his lips!!! Classic!

5. It's like he read this week's Strip Sense! With that amusing maneuver, Wynn goes on the attack. "Suppose there's a strike! Suppose there's an attack! Suppose the economy goes to hell!" he said, his voice rising. "What do you do? Tell everybody to go home? Oh, gosh, golly, sorry. … you look like a ninny. You’re supposed to understand that stuff happens. ... I have found it surprising that my brilliant colleagues have somehow managed to forget those things on occasion and now they’re paying a price for it." Now, what was it I wrote in the last two paragraphs of this week's Las Vegas Weekly column again?

6. One last, great quote. Wynn, bemoaning the lousy room rates he's getting for Wynn and Encore right now, said of these resorts: "This is not what they were built for." I think he really meant to say, "This is not WHO they were built for."

There's lots more and I encourage everyone to race to the Las Vegas Sun and watch it. I would've loved to have embedded the video of today's episode here -- it's in four parts -- but there doesn't seem to be a way on the Las Vegas Sun's website to do so. Weird, that.

Ralston's second show with Wynn should appear online tomorrow and promises to be more about politics and state budget issues. According to Jon's own summary of this interview, Wynn refers to Gov. Jim Gibbons, the Republican who promised Wynn he'd support the 3 percent room tax increase if the public voted for it only to let it become law without his signature, as "an unusual man." I wonder if he makes more funny faces when he says that.

This week's LVW col: Building Block

Here's this week's Las Vegas Weekly piece, to some extent a continuation of the thoughts from last week. Cheers!

Building block
More than a few did see this mess coming, and acted accordingly
By STEVE FRIESS

The competition was trying to be dignified, generous, sympathetic.

“Yes, I think it would be devastating to Las Vegas for MGM to fail,” said Jan Laverty Jones, senior vice president at Harrah’s and former Vegas mayor, to my question from last week’s column about whether MGM Mirage and CityCenter were the Nevada equivalent of an entity “too big to fail.” “But,” she added, “the question becomes, did MGM really get too big, or did the precipitous fall in the economy and consumer confidence cause the size of the project to be too big? Could anyone ever have expected this?”

That last question perked my ears up, because it was nearly verbatim something Phil Ruffin, the Kansas billionaire taking the Treasure Island off of MGM Mirage’s hands for $775 million, had said an hour earlier.

“This economy is so bad,” Ruffin said. “Who would have predicted any of this would happen?”

Well, here’s the thing: They did. Both of them and/or their corporations.

Okay, they didn’t anticipate the historic international implosion of the housing and credit markets. They didn’t know that Wall Street and Main Street would be brought to their knees by bizarre, unsustainable and falsely valued financial instruments or that, for the first time in anyone’s memory, a major economic disruption would turn once-impervious Las Vegas into a tourist ghost town and conventioneers’ national pariah.

So, no. Foreseeing this precise event coming to pass? Terry Lanni, Jim Murren, Kirk Kerkorian, Sheldon Adelson and the rest of the MGM Mirage and Las Vegas Sands leaderships are absolved of that.

But how about simply a serious slowdown? A saturation of the marketplace? A pause that refreshes?

Read the rest at this Las Vegas Weekly link.

Sen. Reid calling banks for MGM Mirage?

Just one article into this morning's Review-Journal, already I'm struck by something that seems like it could be an enormous scandal and right-wing outrage if true. But I wonder if it is because R-J gaming reporter Howard Stutz buried it so deep in his column that either he doesn't see the implications or he's not all that confident about his anonymous source.

Stutz's column is mainly about what Kirk Kerkorian is up to now that his company is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy or worse. After MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren says point-blank that Kerkorian is not involved in negotiations with lenders, here's the passage that grabbed me by hte collar:

One gaming analyst said Kerkorian and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a close friend, have been calling financial institutions to try and raise the remaining $1.2 billion needed to complete the $9.1 billion CityCenter development.

Um, wow. The nation's most powerful legislator is ringing up investment houses big enough to pony up $1.2 billion and pleading with them to save a massive Strip casino development? Really? Does that sound sane to you? Sure, Reid has to be worried about what an MGM default could do to the rest of the already-tattered Nevada economy, but he's also in the throes of attacking the same institutions for the risky, lousy investments that led the nation to this precipice. And he's already taking some heat for possibly sheltering AIG prior to the bonuses scandal. Such phone calls would seem to be laden in all sorts of ethical and political minefields.

I just had this text-message exchange with MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman.

VegasHappensHere: Howard Stutz reports today that Reid has been calling banks for MGM trying to help get you loans for CityCenter. Is that possibly true?

Feldman: Not the way Howard wrote it. We (and hundreds of other businesses arond the country) have tried to use any possibly avenue to get banks lending again, including asking politicians to weigh in. They're not being asked to involve themselves in any of the detail, just to emphasize the larger public interests at play in making loans and getting the flow of credit started. This is very similar to the dialogue on Capital Hill in House and Senate banking committee hearings."

VegasHappensHere: So do you know of an instance where Reid has called a bank to ask them to give MGM or any other gaming company a loan?

Feldman: No.

I'm waiting to hear back from Sen. Reid's office as well. But such a claim is so incendiary and controversial that I'm a bit surprised the newspaper would run with it if Stutz didn't have at least a few sources claiming the same thing. Still, he clearly states it's the speculation of "one gaming analyst" who is granted anonymity. So it's either true and a huge scandal or it's irresponsible journalism.

The Punctuation of the Strip

After two weeks of the serious business of analyzing Christina Binkley's messy Steve Wynn bio, I went a a little whimsical this week. You can hear Wynn's reaction to the Encore-punctuation question on this week's upcoming episode of the Strip as well as more news on his plans for redeveloping the golf course. Join us live on Tuesday, 7-8 pm PT, at LVRocks.Com, or grab the podcast on Thursday.

Now, here's this week's Weekly col...

What's in a Dot: The Punctuation of the Strip
by Steve Friess

At some point when I wasn’t looking, they slapped the word “Encore” atop the new building that stands beside the tower for which Encore is the, uh, encore. The original, of course, is Wynn Las Vegas, or “Wynn.” (heretofore written as “Wynn Period”) as it reads in script on it and on bottles of water and God only knows what else.

It kind of disappointed me, that “Encore” sign did. There was no punctuation to chew over. In the process, it seemed to be undermining the very notion that this new building was a continuation of some sort of thought or concept begun by Wynn Period.

You probably think I’m a grammar geek. Guilty. But punctuation is very, very important in Las Vegas. Almost nothing, not even a dot after a name, is done without a great deal of thought. When Steve Wynn decided to make his building read Wynn Period, he was making a point. This was his big comeback after Kirk Kerkorian and the MGM crowd snapped up Mirage Resorts and, with it, the Bellagio, which had been seen up till then as Wynn’s crowning masterpiece.

In 2005, his new building screamed Wynn Period as if to say, “This is the Wynn. Period.” Wynn once told me as much, explaining it was a subtle way of saying that this is the definition of his embodiment as a resort, the ultimate. As subtle, that is, as you can be on top of a 42-story building and so many bottles of water.

There are other ways up and down the Strip that punctuation comes into play in an important way.

READ THE REST HERE

Busy Tuesday

I'm off to the MGM Mirage shareholders' meeting at MGM Grand shortly to see what's what with the $12 billion offer by Kirk Kerkorian to, essentially, buy Bellagio and CityCenter from himself and out from under MGM Mirage. I'll be writing for Reuters on that. And then, later, I have a chat with Las Vegas Sands President Bill Weidner for tonight's episode of "The Strip."

Yes, that's right. We're postponing airing our Killers interviews until next Tuesday in light of the huge news coming out of Vegas this week about the fate of MGM Mirage.

Gotta get in the shower. Join us from 7-8 pm PT tonight at LVRocks.Com for the live show and chat.

Bellagio, CityCenter Going Private?

This is a really big deal. I can't imagine that MGM Mirage would want to sell these key assets, but there's a price to everything. It sure would accelerate MGM Mirage's North Strip plans, hmm? From the AP:

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) -- The investment arm of billionaire
investor Kirk Kerkorian says it will enter talks to buy MGM
Mirage's Bellagio hotel-casino and City Center properties.
Shares of MGM Mirage soared in aftermarket trading.
Kerkorian's Tracinda Corporation also says in a filing with the
Securities and Exchange Commission that it wants to pursue what it
calls "strategic alternatives" related to its investment in MGM
Mirage.
Tracinda says those alternatives may include a financial
restructuring involving all or significant part of the rest of the
company.
MGM shares jumped more than 11 percent -- or 7 dollars and 22
cents -- to 70 dollars and 40 cents in aftermarket trading.