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A study of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s record in Atlantic City shows that Trump casinos lost jobs at a greater rate than their rivals, while Trump personally profited, the Wall Street Journal reported today. An analysis by Temple University law professor Jonathan Lipson ranked Trump-branded casinos “the worst” among their peers when it came to jobs over a 14-year period. Lipson, a bankruptcy scholar, found that Trump casinos shed some 7,400 jobs between 1997 and 2010. That works out, on average, to job losses per casino of 900 — 37 percent higher than at other Atlantic City gambling venues in the same period. Trump’s campaign disputes the implication from the analysis that he was a bad casino operator, saying that there were other market forces at work. The campaign said in a statement to the Journal that the organization faced additional challenges of having three Trump casinos competing in the same market, which “turned out to be a disadvantage” once times got tough.

A U.S. judge has ordered a former luxury real estate mogul to pay $286 million to the creditors of a Montana club for the ultrarich that he is accused of fleecing for personal gain before driving it into bankruptcy, the Associated Press reported yesterday. The order on Wednesday from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ralph Kirscher is the latest turn in a yearslong hunt for assets of Timothy Blixseth, the founder of the Yellowstone Club, a private ski and golf resort near Big Sky with an elite group of members including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Blixseth diverted hundreds of millions of dollars from a 2005 Credit Suisse loan to the club, using the money to buy jets, yachts and luxury properties around the globe. His ex-wife received the club as part of their divorce settlement in 2008 and it went bankrupt within months after its huge liabilities were uncovered. The club later emerged from bankruptcy under new ownership. Blixseth is now representing himself in the case and said in a court filing last week that blame for the club's bankruptcy should be shared by Credit Suisse, which he claimed unfairly enticed him into accepting a reckless loan. Judge Kirscher agreed with that claim in 2010, when he issued a reduced, $41 million judgment against Blixseth. But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in July, saying Credit Suisse's wrongdoing paled against Blixseth's and he should have to relinquish his "ill-gotten gains."

A group of current and former Hilton Hotels Corp. executives accuse the hotel giant of failing to pay $4.7 million in retirement benefits it allegedly owes as part of its relationship with Caesars Entertainment Corp. (Boyle v. Hilton Hotels Corp., D. Nev., No. 2:16-cv-02250), Bloomberg’s Pension & Benefits Daily reported yesterday. The lawsuit, filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, brings attention to the 1998 spin-off of Hilton’s gaming division — formerly known as Park Place Entertainment Corp. — which later changed its name to Caesars. After Caesars filed for bankruptcy last year, Hilton sued the gaming company for its alleged failure to pay at least $17.7 million in contributions to a pension fund for former Hilton employees. The case was settled this summer in the bankruptcy court.

Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital will give up most of their stake in Caesars Entertainment to help it emerge from chapter 11 protection, the New York Times reported today. The complicated agreement, announced yesterday, settles a long-running battle between the private equity firms and a host of creditors. Under the terms of the deal, Apollo and TPG will hand over their $950 million stake in Caesars Entertainment’s parent company, which is publicly traded and not in bankruptcy protection. (They will retain a smaller stake in Caesars Entertainment through their holdings in another affiliate.) More senior creditors will also give up some of what they are owed. Over all, creditors will own 70 percent of Caesars when it emerges from chapter 11 protection. Shareholders in the still-public parent company will own 6 percent in the newly reorganized company.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. said today that its major creditors supported the proposed terms of a plan to push its main operating unit out of bankruptcy, making it "optimistic" of winning approval from other creditors, Reuters reported. Caesars offered a sweetened $5 billion settlement last week to hold-out creditors of its main operating unit, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co Inc (CEOC). In exchange, creditors would have to drop their allegations of fraud prior to the unit's bankruptcy in January 2015 with $18 billion of debt. Caesars said today that the parties were working on the support agreements and amending CEOC's current reorganization plan to adopt the proposed terms they had agreed on. Caesars and its private equity owners Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital Management offered junior creditors an increased recovery of 66 cents on the dollar, the casino operator said.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. is inching closer to a deal to finance the reorganization of its bankrupt operating unit and end two years of rancorous court battles that embroiled the casino giant and its controlling shareholders, Apollo Global Management LLC and TPG Capital, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday. Caesars Entertainment Operating Co.’s bondholders and lenders are hammering out the framework of a deal. Negotiations continued on Saturday after a Friday deadline passed without a final agreement. The parties must determine how to divide a $400 million payout called for in a new plan the casino operator offered two days ago to get holdout second-priority creditors on board with a restructuring. A proposal under discussion would require the operating unit’s most senior bondholders and lenders to give up $170 million of their original recoveries, while Caesars provides $200 million. The unit’s lower-ranking, second-lien bondholders, a group that includes David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management, would forgo the remaining $30 million.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. is the closest it’s been to ending two years of rancorous court battles with bondholders over who should pay to fix the casino giant’s insolvent operating unit, which can’t afford to pay almost $20 billion in debt, Bloomberg News reported today. The company is giving creditors until midnight in New York to accept a sweetened offer of more than $5 billion in cash, new debt and stock in a reorganized company. A group of bondholders that have been the biggest obstacle to the company’s plan has agreed on the framework of a deal, people familiar with the talks said Thursday. Now the question will be whether the company’s more senior lenders — who were on board with previous iterations of the plan — will be willing to give up some of the gains they won at the negotiating table in order to get the plan approved. Those creditors, who hold Caesars’ bank loans and first-lien bonds, would need to give up “hundreds of millions of dollars” in recoveries, according to the offer Caesars disclosed on Wednesday. A deal would put the unit, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., on track to exit one of the biggest bankruptcies of the past decade. Creditors including David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management have been battling the private-equity titans that acquired the company in a 2008 leveraged buyout, Apollo Global Management LLC and TPG Capital. Read more. 

In related news, Bankruptcy Judge A. Benjamin Goldgar provided comments on Wednesday regarding the resignation of the mediator in the case. Judge Goldgar offered clarification on some of the critical comments and misunderstandings he found within the resignation letter. Click here to read the court excerpt. 

Caesars Entertainment Corp. will now contribute more than $5 billion to its operating unit’s restructuring in its final settlement offer to disgruntled bondholders, the Wall Street Journal reported today. David Seligman, a lawyer for the bankrupt Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., or CEOC, unit, said in bankruptcy court that a prior pledge of about $4 billion has increased by about $1.2 billion, which he called the “best and final proposal” in long-running negotiations with CEOC creditors and Caesars. The increased value includes setting additional Caesars equity aside for CEOC’s creditors, the result of current Caesars backers Apollo Global Management and TPG agreeing to surrender their equity, valued at more than $950 million, in the company. Another $100 million will come from directors’ and officers’ insurance policies, Seligman said.

Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar said at a hearing yesterday that billionaire investors Marc Rowan and David Bonderman are among Caesars Entertainment Corp. directors who must disclose details of their wealth to creditors of the casino holding company's bankrupt subsidiary, Reuters reported. Junior creditors of Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. Inc. (CEOC) convinced the court yesterday to force six of the parent's directors to prove they can contribute to CEOC's reorganization plan in exchange for releases from allegations of fraud. CEOC filed an $18 billion bankruptcy in January 2015. Junior creditors accuse directors of Caesars and its private equity sponsors Apollo Global Management LLC and TPG Capital of orchestrating a plan to strip CEOC of "crown jewels," such as the Linq Hotel & Casino complex in Las Vegas, prior to its bankruptcy.

Apollo Global Management LLC and TPG Capital offered to pay $250 million to help get Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. out of bankruptcy, according to two Apollo executives, contradicting claims that the casino company’s private-equity sponsors refused to spend their own money to make peace with creditors, Bloomberg News reported today. A mediator working to foster agreement between bondholders and parent company Caesars Entertainment Corp. asked Apollo and TPG whether they “would fund up to $250 million to reach a ‘best and final’ deal” that paid the bondholders 58 percent of what they are owed, Apollo executives Marc J. Rowan and David B. Sambur said in a filing on Wednesday in Chicago federal court. The mediator “was advised that the sponsors would provide the incremental funding,” Rowan and Sambur said in the filing, which asks U.S. Bankruptcy Judge A. Benjamin Goldgar to block the bondholders’ request for personal financial information. Settlement talks involving Rowan and Sambur last month failed to produce a deal, according to Wednesday’s filing. The executives said the bondholders demanded “several times” the $250 million offered.