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Atlantic City's mayor is calling on billionaire investor Carl Icahn to sell the shuttered Trump Taj Mahal casino, saying his struggling city can't afford to let such a big piece of its Boardwalk lie vacant indefinitely, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Republican Don Guardian said yesterday that allowing the casino to stay vacant is "the worst of the worst" in terms of outcomes for the property, which Icahn closed Oct. 10 after a bruising strike by the city's main casino workers' union. Icahn replied he'd be happy to sell the casino to the mayor — if he ponied up the $300 million Icahn says he has lost on it. Guardian made the comments after his unofficial State of the City speech, in which he listed the numerous challenges facing his city, including a state takeover and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. Asked for his response to Icahn's handling of the Taj Mahal, Guardian replied, "Sell it, make a profit and move on."

Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s bankrupt operating unit resolved a dispute with its lenders on Friday, paving the way for a consensual plan to push the casino group out of its $18 billion chapter 11, Reuters reported. In filings with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago, bank lenders said that they had reached an agreement over their recovery terms and were withdrawing a threat to abandon a plan to end Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. Inc.’s two-year bankruptcy. The lenders, which include Blackstone Group LP's GSO Capital Partners, had set a Dec. 24 deadline for reaching a deal, without which the unit's restructuring plan would have fallen apart.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. said yesterday that lenders to its bankrupt operating unit have moved to potentially terminate a pact to support the unit's $18 billion restructuring, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The lenders, owed $5.4 billion, cited the currently "unacceptable" terms of the new debt they are slated to receive under the restructuring plan as the reason for looking to consider breaking off their support for the plan, Caesars said yesterday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If Caesars and its Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., or CEOC, unit don't address the problem by Dec. 24, then the lenders could officially terminate their support pact, the SEC filing said.

Bankruptcy Judge Brenda Moody Whinery ruled yesterday that the historic Lodge on the Desert will remain under control of a receiver appointed by a state court, at least until continuation of the hotel’s chapter 11 bankruptcy case is decided in January, the Arizona Daily Star reported today. In late November, hotel owner Lodge Partners filed its second chapter 11 bankruptcy in three years, saying that it had arranged a short-term loan and longer-term financing to successfully reorganize the business. The company had defaulted on payments required under a chapter 11 bankruptcy case filed in 2013 and closed last year. The hotel’s major secured creditor, Palatine Tucson LLC, filed a foreclosure action and prompted a state court to appoint a receiver for the hotel in early November. A foreclosure sale of the hotel was scheduled for Jan. 5.

The bank lenders of Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s operating unit said that they might walk away from a plan to bring the casino unit out of its $18 billion bankruptcy, potentially sending a high-stakes reorganization plan into disarray, Reuters reported yesterday. The committee of bank lenders, which includes Blackstone Group LP's GSO Capital Partners, has yet to resolve a dispute over the terms of their recovery, their lawyer Kristopher Hansen said at a hearing yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago. Hansen said that the lenders would inform the court on the status of a deal by Dec. 14, a month before a scheduled confirmation trial in Caesars Entertainment Operating Co Inc.’s long-running bankruptcy case. Without a deal, Hansen said the committee would terminate a restructuring support agreement, forcing the confirmation trial to be postponed beyond its scheduled Jan. 17 date.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. and Caesars Entertainment Operating Company, Inc. (CEOC) and its chapter 11 debtor subsidiaries announced yesterday that substantially all voting creditor classes have voted to accept CEOC's proposed plan of reorganization, according to a press release. The plan was accepted by more than 90 percent of voting creditors. Each of the creditor classes for the debtors' first lien noteholders, first lien bank lenders, second lien noteholders, subsidiary-guaranteed noteholders, and unsecured noteholders voted to accept the plan in numbers well in excess of what is necessary to confirm the plan. The overwhelming support for the plan is an important milestone toward CEOC confirming its plan and emerging from bankruptcy protection in 2017.

By the end of today, Atlantic City will use $2.3 million to cover payments due on its bonds, saving investors from the toll of the seaside casino town’s financial collapse, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. With New Jersey seizing control of the city’s finances to avoid a default, the burden is poised to fall instead on residents, municipal employees and businessmen. Atlantic City is the latest test for New Jersey, which hasn’t allowed a local government to default or go bankrupt since the Great Depression -- a commitment that’s left even its distressed municipalities able to raise money for schools, roads and other public works in the bond market. This stands in contrast to what has been seen in California, Alabama and Michigan, where municipalities resorted to bankruptcy after the most recent recession to escape from debts they could no longer afford. The city of 39,000 residents has been veering toward insolvency since a third of its casinos shut down in 2014 due to the proliferation of legalized gambling on the East Coast, which undercut the city’s gambling monopoly. That dealt a blow to its finances, leaving an ongoing budget shortfall of about $100 million, as revenue disappeared and casinos still opened successfully challenged their annual property-tax bills.

The U.S. government's bankruptcy watchdog objected yesterday to a Caesars Entertainment Corp. subsidiary's proposal to exit chapter 11, threatening to derail a largely consensual plan to slash $10 billion of debt, Reuters reported. The Caesars subsidiary, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. Inc. (CEOC), filed an $18 billion bankruptcy in January 2015 amid allegations by creditors that its private equity-backed parent had looted the unit of its best assets and stripped debt guarantees. Feuding parties made a peace deal in September that included a $5 billion contribution by Caesars to the unit's reorganization plan in exchange for releases from billions of dollars in potential legal claims. In a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago, the U.S. Trustee objected to the releases and the exculpation of "a wide array of parties for acts far beyond the plan or the Chapter 11 cases." The U.S. Trustee called the releases "blanket immunity." A report by an independent examiner in March said that Caesars and its private equity backers Apollo Global Management LLC and TPG Capital Management LP could be on the hook for up to $5.1 billion in damages for the alleged asset-stripping.