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Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s main casino operating unit has begun a process to raise up to $3.8 billion of cash needed to exit a contentious two-year bankruptcy, Reuters reported yesterday. After more than a year of legal battles, the Caesars subsidiary last month secured support from the vast majority of its creditors for a wide-ranging plan to emerge from bankruptcy early next year. Now Caesars Entertainment Operating Co Inc. is seeking financing for its reorganization plan, which entails splitting Caesars' main bankrupt unit into a casino operator and real estate investment trust (REIT), both controlled by creditors. If the plan wins bankruptcy court approval at a trial set for January, CEOC must have at least $1.8 billion in new financing for the REIT and $1.2 billion for the operating company before the reorganization can become effective.

The Trump International Hotel & Tower in Toronto is likely to hit the market as the owner of debt on the property seeks a sale, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. JCF Capital ULC recently bought the construction loan on the 65-story hotel and condominium building, and claims developer Talon International Inc. and related companies have defaulted on making payments since last year. JCF Capital is seeking a court-supervised sales process for the property to recoup the outstanding C$301 million ($225 million) on the debt, according to court filings made on Tuesday under Canada’s Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. The court filing is the latest in the decade-long saga of the building, which was Trump’s first branded hotel in Canada. Since construction began in 2007, the tower has been subject to lawsuits against Donald Trump’s firm and Talon from investors who say they were duped; a court battle to end Trump’s management agreement; and protests after the U.S. presidential candidate made comments about Mexicans, Muslims, and women during his campaign. Earlier this year, Talon attempted to sell the property after defaulting on the loan, originally given by Raiffeisen Bank International AG in 2007, the court documents show. JCF Capital acquired the loan on Oct. 3 and sent a notice to Talon twice this month asking for repayment.

A court filing showed yesterday that hedge fund Trilogy Capital Management, the last holdout bondholder of Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s bankrupt operating unit, has agreed to support the casino group's restructuring and halt litigation, Reuters reported. The agreement removes the threat of a judgment against Caesars, which was facing lawsuits by hedge funds (including Trilogy) over guarantees on its operating unit's bonds. While Trilogy's claim was small at $9.4 million, a judgment could have blown up a crucial $5 billion restructuring deal that Caesars reached last month with creditors to resolve billions of dollars of potential lawsuits. In a filing with the U.S. district court in Chicago, Trilogy and the Caesars parties said that they had reached a consensual resolution of their dispute and asked the court to strike a hearing on the matter that had been scheduled for December. Trilogy and Caesars declined to provide details of the agreement.

A lawyer for the U.S. government's bankruptcy watchdog raised concerns in court over Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s $5 billion creditor deal to push its main unit out of chapter 11, even as hold-out creditors appeared closer to backing the agreement, Reuters reported yesterday. Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. Inc. filed for bankruptcy in January 2015 amid allegations by creditors that its parent had looted the unit of its best assets, leaving it with $18 billion of debt. Las Vegas-based Caesars reached an agreement with creditors last month that includes a $5 billion contribution to CEOC's reorganization plan in exchange for releases from billions of dollars in legal claims. Even though most of the creditors have agreed to drop their allegations against Caesars, the Bankruptcy Code holds that any deal must adhere to the law, Denise Delaurent, an attorney with the U.S. Trustee’s Office, said at an Illinois court hearing. She said her office was reviewing fees and aspects of the deal that released some parties from lawsuits. "From our perspective even if everyone comes to an agreement, it might still violate the law," she said.

ABI Executive Director Sam Gerdano talks with Prof. Jonathan C. Lipson of the James E. Beasley School of Law at Temple University about Lipson's paper, "Making America Worse: Jobs and Money at Trump Casinos, 1997-2010." Lipson discusses his findings, which revealed that Atlantic City casinos owned or controlled by Donald Trump between 1997-2010 (the Taj Mahal, Marina, and Plaza) lost far more jobs and revenue than other Atlantic City casinos. Click here to listen to the podcast.

Donald Trump called it the Eighth Wonder of the World, but the Trump Taj Mahal closed its doors yesterday just before 6 a.m., CNNMoney.com reported yesterday. Donald Trump himself no longer owned anything more than the name attached to the Taj's grandiose neon minarets. In its last days, the casino was controlled by the financier Carl Icahn. Icahn called it a "sad day for Atlantic City" and for the 3,000 workers at the Taj. But he said he couldn't reach an agreement with striking union workers and could no longer run the casino without hemorrhaging money. The union, representing about 1,000 of the Taj's workers, reached deals with four other casinos in the city just before the Independence Day weekend, including another casino owned by Icahn. But Taj workers went on strike July 1. The Trump Taj Mahal had been in trouble for years, along with the rest of cash-strapped Atlantic City, where five casinos have closed since 2014, including Trump Plaza. Of the seven that remain, two, Bally's and Caesar's, have filed for chapter 11 protection.

For years in this seaside gambling resort, Donald Trump's name and face seemed to be everywhere — in neon letters across the facades of three casinos, on billboards, and in ads on the side of shuttle buses, the Associated Press reported on Friday. But the man who is now the Republican presidential nominee has been mostly gone from Atlantic City since 2009, when a well-publicized decline was starting its third year. Today, the last vestige of Donald J. Trump will vanish from Atlantic City when the new owner of the Trump Taj Mahal casino shuts it down. Trump's business record in Atlantic City was mixed. His casinos took in tons of money, but they were so thoroughly laden with debt that it led to four bankruptcies under his watch, and one more after he was gone. He grew somewhat wistful while discussing the impending demise of the last of his onetime casino empire. Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor and Trump friend who owns the casino, and Atlantic City's main casino workers' union were unable to reach a deal to restore union workers' health insurance and pension benefits that were terminated in its most recent bankruptcy.

A U.S. judge on Wednesday halted a lawsuit against Caesars Entertainment Corp., saying that it could derail last week's $5 billion agreement that was aimed at extracting the casino company from a costly bankruptcy, Reuters reported today. While a vast majority of Caesars creditors agreed to drop some $13 billion in legal claims against the casino group last week, a hedge fund with a $9.4 million claim refused to back the deal and sought to pursue its lawsuit. Trilogy Capital Management is one of several hedge funds that had accused Caesars of scrapping a guarantee on the debt of its bankrupt subsidiary, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. Inc. (CEOC). A judgment in New York was due as soon as today. "The risk that the Trilogy action will derail the reorganization is too great," Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar said yesterday. CEOC has secured the support of creditors who until last week were threatening its Nasdaq-listed parent with billions of dollars in claims over a series of transactions prior to the unit's bankruptcy filing in January 2015 with $18 billion of debt.

The legal bill for Caesars Entertainment Operating Co.’s year-and-a-half-long battle with creditors has come in at $301.3 million, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The casino company disclosed the cost in a bankruptcy court filing on Friday, days after announcing a settlement that will bring peace to the $18 billion restructuring. The fees and expenses, which Caesars paid between the date of its Jan. 15, 2015, bankruptcy filing through Aug. 31, 2016, have gone to the roughly two dozen law, investment-banking, consulting and other professional firms on its chapter 11 payroll. The chapter 11 case of CEOC, the operating unit of Caesars Entertainment Corp., has been a battle from the start, when a group of junior bondholders, including hedge funds Appaloosa Management LP and Oaktree Capital Management LP, sought to force CEOC into involuntary bankruptcy.