Rid of the Atlantic Club Hotel, Showboat, Trump Plaza and Revel, cash flow at Atlantic City casinos shot upward 7%, or $147.5 million. Once that unhappy quartet is 
removed from the year-over-year comparison, the percentage increase falls to 3% but the dollar growth goes to $152 million in gross operating profit. Of course that’s before interest, taxes, depreciation and all that good stuff — and the Caesars Entertainment properties are carrying particularly heavy interest. Mohegan Sun, meanwhile, is working wonders at Resorts Atlantic City, increasing cash flow 600%, to $5 million. Tilman Fertitta‘s people also did well at the Golden Nugget, generating 156% EBITDA growth. By contrast, the maladroit Robert Griffin administration at Trump Taj Mahal saw operating profit fall 39%. The Caesars trio of casinos also had declines, but none that severe.
Would-be Taj owner Carl Icahn doesn’t want Griffin around — can you blame him? — if and when he takes over. So he’s looking to former magician Herbert L. Becker, who will definitely need some sleight of hand to make an Icahn takeover work. One of Becker’s goals is to make Atlantic City “a great family place. It has just gone the wrong way.” An erstwhile sidekick to Bozo the Clown, Becker is also better labor/management relations. That may be a little too late for Taj workers who have seen their pension plans and paid holidays go “Poof!”
* While we still don’t know for certain whether or not Wynn Resorts is under
federal investigation, the prospect might imperil his Massachusetts license or at least make it 
more difficult to finance the project. “Whether or not we would actually take negative action, that is uncertain. I don’t think that we would do that in this case with the information we have at this point,” said Fitch Ratings analyst Michael Paladino. “If there’s additional information that gives us more concern from a regulatory or a compliance standpoint, we’d consider it at that time.”
Wynn execs have to be rueing the fact that this brouhaha is making headlines just as they were heading to Wall Street to raise the capital for their Everett project, $1.25 billion of whose $1.6 billion cost will have to be borrowed. The feds have definitely sent a message: Improve your compliance or else.
* First-lien creditors have given Caesars a 72-hour deadline to cure an alleged default. To comply would require Caesars to unravel the arrangement whereby sundry assets from Caesars Interactive to Harrah’s New Orleans were spun off into subsidiary Caesars Growth Properties. Expect Caesars to hang tough.
* It’s a matter of weeks before Las Vegas Sands COO Michael Leven retires and the 
company still hasn’t filled his position. Still, the former hotelier seems to be in a mellow mood. When he came aboard Sands, six years ago, promoted from board member to executive, Leven had little experience with casinos and was viewed with skepticism in some quarters. However, he steadied a company that had been rife with infighting and he turned around a crash-and-burn in the stock price. He’d didn’t solve every challenge — the St. Regis on the Strip remains unfinished — but he’s done things like leverage his hotel-industry expertise into a portfolio of name brands on the Cotai Strip. Enjoy your retirement, sir. You’ve earned it.
* Ka unveils a new version of its climactic battle scene on Dec. 3. It had been deleted — or rather, replaced with computer projections — after the 2013 accident that killed aerialist Sarah Guillot-Guyard. Although it seemed like a futile effort at the time, it turns out that MGM Resorts International and Cirque du Soleil were right to appeal nine adverse OSHA findings, which were reduced to one.
