Featured Articles Archive - Page 558

Citycenter development: Financing fears 'overdone'

LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- Wall Street's concerns about MGM Mirage's delay in completing financing for its massive CityCenter development are overblown, MGM Mirage executives said Tuesday. During the company's second-quarter earnings conference call, in which MGM Mirage reported a 68 percent decline in net profits, company officials said they had secured commitments for $1.65 billion of the necessary $3 billion in financing and said they would complete it by the end of September, if not sooner. MGM Mirage is working on obtaining the rest with Dubai World, its joint venture partner in CityCenter. "I think it's been overdone in terms of interest on this," MGM Mirage President and Chief Operating Officer Jim Murren said in response to one of several questions about the financing for the $9.2 billion CityCenter...read more

MGM Mirage halts Jean project

LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- MGM Mirage on Monday officially pulled the plug on a planned mixed-use development in Jean, blaming the sour economic climate. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, MGM Mirage said it formally terminated an agreement with developer American Nevada Corp...read more

Ameristar laying off 3 percent of workers

LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- The souring national economy has affected the regional casino markets. Las Vegas based-Ameristar Casinos, which operates eight casinos primarily in the Midwest, said Monday it laid off roughly 3 percent of its casino work force during the second quarter ended June 30. The casino operator eliminated 244 employees and took steps to either eliminate or reduce hours for 150 other positions...read more

Echelon delayed, Boyd decision hailed

LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- The announcement by Boyd Gaming Corp. on Friday morning that the casino operator will delay construction of its $4.8 billion Echelon project on the Strip for up to a year was met with applause on Wall Street. Company shares, which have been hammered over the past 12 months, rose more than 20 percent on the New York Stock Exchange...read more

Inside gaming: Trying times loom for Sands in Macau

MACAO -- Visa restrictions imposed by the Chinese government that curtail mass-market visitation to Macau hurt Las Vegas Sands Corp. more than any other casino operator. But did Beijing act deliberately to punish Las Vegas Sands? Some observers speculate Chinese leaders are not happy the Beijing government's inner workings were aired in a Las Vegas courtroom last spring during Hong Kong businessman Richard Suen's six-week civil trial against Las Vegas Sands. The company's Venetian Macau, with 3,000 hotel rooms and a 546,000-square-foot casino, needs the casual Chinese visitor from Macau's neighboring provinces to supplement its sizable high-end, junket-fueled customer base...read more

Bits and Pieces from Indian Country - July 2008

Indian gaming numbers for 2007 were released by the National Indian Gaming Commission. Indian gaming is still growing, although the growth has slowed to 5 percent. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act is twenty years old this year and revenues have grown from $200 million to $26 billion...read more

Quick-takes: The month's trends in a glance - July 2008

TAKE ONE Gaming in the United States has matured; growth into new markets is slowing as there are fewer new jurisdictions available for expansion and revenues are flat or declining in the face of a challenging economy. We are all feeling the rising price of gasoline, the tightening of the credit market, a falling stock market, increased unemployment, falling consumer confidence, and an endless series of doom and gloom news stories about the economy...read more

Gaming stocks take beating

LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- If this were a fight, it would be stopped on cuts. The average daily stock price of nine of the 10 publicly traded gaming companies charted by a Las Vegas financial adviser recorded double-digit declines in July, continuing a slide that began in March...read more

Tells, cheats, quotes -- three poker books for those who like variety

Looking for variety in poker books? Here are three different, yet each in its own way fascinating, books on the game for players who just can't get enough as they learn or improve on their game. They cover three totally different aspects of the game yet provide plenty of information of value.The books are Poker Face -- Mastering Body Language to Bluff, Read Tells and Win by Judi James (256 pages, paperbound, $14.95), Poker Unchecked by Russ Georgiev (286 pages, paperbound, $29.95) and Essential Poker edited by Graham Sharpe (157 pages, hardbound, $22.95).Since the classic Mike Caro book on body language and tells at the poker table (written 25 years ago), there have been a cluster of titles recently updating tells, alerting you to your own tells and those of your opponents...read more

IRS seizes more than $24 million from payment processors after two-year Bodog probe

A two-year IRS investigation into Bodog has resulted in the seizure of more than 24 million dollars from two payment processors. On January 24 and February 19, 2008, the IRS siezed about $14.2 million from JBL Services, according to court documents filed in federal court in Baltimore...read more