When Kirk Kerkorian finally made a tender offer for Mirage Resorts in April 2000, everyone braced for a battle of the titans. Instead Wynn went meekly. By June, MGM Grand had acquired Mirage for $6.4 billion, the biggest merger in gaming history. Only six months earlier, Park Place Entertainment had bought Caesars World for $3 billion, and THAT had been the biggest merger in gaming history.
“Thank God the arms race was over,” said one analyst. Or maybe just postponed. Even before he completed the deal with Kerkorian, Wynn had bought the Desert Inn and projected his next opening in the year 2004.
Meanwhile, the real “Father of the Strip” today is Kerkorian, chairman of the now combined Mirage and MGM properties. He built his first Vegas hotel, the Las Vegas Hilton, back when Howard Hughes was still in town, and his MGM Grand is the second-largest hotel in the world. Almost painfully camera-shy, he’s never done TV commercials, like Wynn, or presided over a demolition spectacle, like Wynn, or given interviews to the fawning local media, like Wynn. (“Steve chooses who interviews him,” said Smith. “He likes people who ask questions like ‘And what brilliant thing did you do next, Steve?'”)
Kerkorian is best remembered as the man who angered Hollywood by dismantling MGM poker online indonesia Studios, selling off its backlot and film library, but in retrospect it looks like he was despised more for being the first guy to understand that movie studio assets were worth more than movie studios.
As chairman of the world’s largest gaming company, he delegates the public relations side of the business to personable Chief Executive Officer J. Terrence Lanni, who is more in the mold of the energetic upbeat go-getter type that the Wall Street analysts love.
But if Wall Street has its way, the executive of the future will be someone like Glenn Schaefer, the statistics-crazy marketing-mad president of Mandalay Bay. “Schaefer is actually the guy who hit the pavement hard for years and proved to us that the gaming industry is a good business, capable of high multiples,” says Ader. “He’s the guy who told Wall Street that this was not a corrupt group of gangsters, but a highly profitable segment of the entertainment industry.”
The new Vegas is fast approaching a time when it will be ruled by interchangeable executives instead of the once powerful and flamboyant characters who built the city.
In 1946 it’s estimated that Meyer Lansky’s lieutenants took over the Flamingo less than 20 minutes after Bugsy Siegel had his head blown off while reading the paper in the Beverly Hills living room of his mistress Virginia Hill. The new Vegas managers are not THAT fast yet, but when Park Place CEO Arthur Goldberg died of a heart attack in October 2001, the panic on the street lasted only about half a day. Within two days the board of directors brought the highly respected Thomas Gallagher over from Hilton Hotels, where as general counsel he had engineered various mergers and acquisitions over the past three years and knew virtually everyone in the industry. Everyone applauded a perfect decision. Life went on. Profit margins were unaffected.
Meanwhile, the latest earnings reports were released, and the only hotels on the Strip returning 20-plus percent on investment were three of the least expensive: New York New York, Flamingo, and Excalibur. The future, it seems, is not paved with Bellagio’s fake marble, glass sculptures and filigree after all. It’s those ladies with the gold-lame fanny packs and the tennis shorts, crowding into the King Arthur Buffet.
King Tut has retired to Lake Como – or maybe just Lake Mead. When he returns this time, his reception will include a healthy dose of skepticism.
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