Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming JUly 2015 44 Las Vegas Mogul Kirk Kerkorian Dies Billionaire financier Kirk Kerkorian, one of the founders of modern Las Vegas, whose name is synonymous with some of the Strip’s best- known hotel-casinos, died 15th July in Los Angeles after a brief illness. Mr Kerkorian, who turned 98 on 6th June, was the largest shareholder in MGM Resorts International, which he founded in the early 1990s. According to a lengthy obituary published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal , Mr Kerkorian was considered one of the central figures in making Las Vegas a premier global tourist destination. Three times he built and opened what were then the world’s largest hotel-casinos—the International (now the Westgate Las Vegas) in 1969, the original MGM Grand (now Bally’s) in 1973 and the current MGM Grand in 1993. Mr Kerkorian invested in and operated businesses in numerous industries, including airlines, automakers and film studios, but no business held his interest as much as gaming. He owned, operated and sold a handful of historic Strip resorts, playing a paramount role in shaping the landscape of the Strip and Las Vegas. Much of what Mr Kerkorian accomplished was without fanfare. When the $8.5 billion CityCenter development opened in 2009, Mr Kerkorian, who had a key role in getting the development off the ground, celebrated the event quietly, away from the spotlight. “Of all the wonderful Las Vegas properties with which I’ve been associated, CityCenter is simply the most amazing,” Mr Kerkorian said in prepared remarks. “I’m extremely excited to see the public’s reaction and look forward to seeing how it changes Las Vegas.” His friends and colleagues in and out of the gaming industry recalled Kerkorian as a quiet and humble pioneer. Born in Fresno, Calif., in 1917 to Armenian immigrants, Mr Kerkorian never had it easy. After the Kerkorians lost their farm in 1922, the family moved to Los Angeles, where at age 9, he sold newspapers on street corners. From those humble beginnings, Mr Kerkorian became one of the world’s richest men. At the time of his death, Forbes magazine ranked him No. 393 among the world’s billionaires and No. 130 in the United States, with a net worth of $4 billion. Tracinda Corp., Mr Kerkorian’s privately held investment company named for daughters Tracy Kerkorian and Linda Ross Hilton Kemper, is MGM’s largest shareholder with 91.1 million shares, or a 16.2% stake. In his youth, he was known as “Rifle Right Kerkorian” for his INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS punching power as a small-time boxer after abandoning reform school in the eighth grade. He had little formal education after that. A friend with whom he worked installing furnaces changed his life by taking him on a flight in a small plane. Mr Kerkorian then paid for flying lessons with famed pilot Pancho Barnes by milking cows and shoveling manure at her ranch. A skilled aviator, Mr Kerkorian flew dangerous missions delivering warplanes from Canada to Britain during World War II and later opened a charter airline ferrying gamblers from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. He began buying property in Las Vegas in 1962 after selling his charter airline, which he later repurchased. After selling the land where Caesars Palace now stands, he bought 82 acres on Paradise Road in 1967. The site would eventually be home of the 1,512-room International. Before that resort opened, Mr Kerkorian bought the Flamingo as a way to train the International’s staff. At the International, Mr Kerkorian brought in Barbra Streisand and Elvis Presley as the hotel’s first two performers. By the end of 1971, he had sold both properties to Hilton Hotels Corp. Mr Kerkorian then took majority ownership of MGM Studios and decided to put the studio’s name on a new hotel-casino, the MGM Grand, which opened in 1973 at a cost of $107 million. With 2,084 rooms, the MGM Grand surpassed the International as the world’s largest hotel-casino. Mr Kerkorian engineered two buyouts that grew MGM Grand into one the gaming industry’s largest companies. In 2000 he negotiated the $6.4 billion purchase of Steve Wynn’s Mirage Resorts and in 2005 helped seal the $7.9 billion Mandalay Resort Group acquisition. “He loves the game, pure and simple, and he knows how to make money for himself and his stockholders,” South Point owner Michael Gaughan said in 2007. Details Emerge About Project on Former New Frontier Site Nearly a year after a partnership acquired a long-dormant 35-acre site on the Las Vegas Strip, preliminary details emerged last month concerning Ālon Las Vegas, a hotel-casino project led by Australian billionaire James Packer and former Wynn Resorts executive Andrew Pascal. Kirk Kerkorian The former New Frontier site