Private investors bagged another trophy yesterday with the acquisition of Harrah’s Entertainment. The price was $17.1 billion, plus the assumption of $10.7 billion in debt. That’s not exactly small change, and it drives home the fact that more or less unlimited capital is available to dealmakers these days, provided the deal itself makes sense. Will Harrah’s prove to be a lucrative acquisition for the buyers, Apollo Management and Texas Pacific Group? My guess is that yes, it will, based on a personal experience I had last summer with one their convention planners in Atlantic City.  

At the time, I was keen on giving a class in Atlantic City class after receiving numerous requests from East Coast subscribers to hold the seminar at a casino. Much to my surprise, Harrah’s was not the least bit interested in accommodating such a group, even if I were to guarantee that at least 50 seminar students would spend the night.

In fact, even if I’d represented a group five times that size, Harrah’s evidently still wouldn’t have been very interested. The catering manager explained to me, that on any given weekend, the hotel would be so completely filled with high rollers that they could not spare even a single room for run-of-the-mill conventioners, not even potential “players” who trade commodities in their spare time.

Dentists, Get Lost!

I visited a couple of other casinos on the way out of town, and although they were at least willing to host one of my seminars on weekdays in, say, February,  there would be no rooms available in any case for at least several months. I was told that the same would hold true if I’d been looking for space to hold a meeting for teachers, dentists, biologists or accountants.

All of this came as quite a surprise, since, having grown up on the same island as Atlantic City,  I’d always thought of the town, even with casinos, as a dump capable of attracting seagulls and fruit flies, maybe. But high rollers? No way. How wrong I was!  If the casino business is that good even in Atlantic City, which arguably is tied with Macau as the armpit of the casino world, then for sure, Harrah’s buyers are onto a good thing.     

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London Seminar Firming

A Hidden Pivot seminar in London appears likely, judging from the strong response I’ve received in just the last few days.  If you’d be interested in attending a two-day class there, probably sometime in the spring of 2007, please let me know via e-mail, including your contact information. The cost would be $1,500 USD.