New Caesars Entertainment CEO Mark Frissora scarcely got his chair warm when former employer Hertz Global Holdings pushed him under the bus, blaming him for a managerial style that led to four 
years’ worth of “material misstatements [and] inappropriate accounting decisions and the failure to disclose information to an effective review” by the company. Hertz continues to be investigated by the SEC and has had to re-state four years’ revenue reportage. Forbes Magazine named Frissora one of the “Worst CEO screw-ups of 2014,” especially after his job performance got a blistering review from Carl Icahn. You’d think a CEO would be held responsible for the restated-earnings fiasco but …
Caesars was quick to circle the wagons around Frissora. Spokeswoman Jan Jones was sent forth to proclaim that the company was “fortunate” to have Frissora, who she described as “focused on driving performance and results.” Applied to Caesars, that formula spells job cuts and more deferred maintenance. (I was at Caesars Palace yesterday and two of the four elevators to the parking garage had been taken out of service — on a weekend! — creating significant customer backlog and inconvenience.) Since Caesars’ bankruptcy continues to be the bailiwick of Chairman Gary Loveman — who also remains the face of the company in its TV commercials — Frissora is looking more and more like a Loveman sock puppet.
* MGM Resorts International turns out to have taken a significant haircut to be rid of Circus Circus Reno and its half of the Silver Legacy: $72.5 million. Mea culpa. Surprisingly, MGM isn’t requiring Eldorado Resorts to take the Circus Circus name off the eponymous casino.
* CEO Jim Simms has some refreshingly straight talk about the early struggles of the Downtown Grand, which is a very nice property that isn’t living up to expectations. Its gaming floor is pleasant and won’t 
jangle your nerves but it’s being outperformed by rooms and dining. (Our stay there was much more pleasant than our night at The Linq.) One hopes that when Simms talks about the cognitive dissonance between a $13 cocktail and a $29 room that it isn’t code for jacking up room rates, although he does complain about the perception of downtown Las Vegas as a bargain market. They do have a very nice pool area and an excellent variety of F&B choices but, as Simms so eloquently puts it, “The fact that we are two minutes away from Fremont [Street] is a long two minutes.” The Downtown Grand really needs the kind of neon arcade that helped make the El Cortez cool again.
