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The closed Revel Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, N.J., wants to tap millions of dollars of new bankruptcy financing in order to pay a $26 million settlement with the city over its 2014 property taxes, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The casino is asking a bankruptcy judge to approve a new $21 million increase in availability, which includes $19 million in new financing provided by Wells Fargo NA. The financing will be combined with $7 million in cash on hand to fund a $26 million settlement with Atlantic City and provide enough cash to operate until Jan. 8.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. today unveiled details of its planned restructuring after agreeing earlier this month to acquire affiliate Caesars Acquisition Co. in a stock-for-stock merger that will better position the $18.4 billion debt load of its largest unit, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., which owns, operates or manages 44 casinos, will be restructured as an operating company and a property company, which would be owned and controlled by a real-estate investment trust. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the operating company and its creditors had been in talks on a deal to put the unit in chapter 11 protection by mid-January and reorganize the company as a real-estate investment trust. The restructuring will also include two leases: one $160-million-a-year lease for the Caesars Palace Las Vegas facility, and one for certain other properties.

The back-up bidder for Revel AC Inc., now having the right to buy the shuttered Atlantic City, New Jersey, casino, wants the bankruptcy judge to cut the $95.4 million purchase price by $8.4 million in view of alleged improprieties in the auction process, Bloomberg News reported today. The purchase price for the casino’s assets should be $87 million, not the $95.4 million offered by Glenn Straub’s Polo North Country Club Inc. at an auction, Polo North said in a Dec. 24 court filing. Revel decided to proceed with a sale to Polo North after Brookfield Property Partners LP terminated a contract to buy the property for $110 million. When the bankruptcy court in Camden, N.J., approved the sale to Brookfield, the judge anointed Straub as the backup bidder to buy the project at his last offer of $95.4 million if the higher sale fell through, which it did. A hearing on the sale is scheduled for Jan. 5, when Straub wants the court to cut the purchase price.

Two listed units of Caesars Entertainment, the troubled casino and resort company, are combining in an attempt to build credibility with creditors ahead of a planned bankruptcy protection filing for its operating unit, due in the coming weeks, the Financial Times reported today. Caesars Entertainment, the parent company, will acquire its affiliate Caesars Acquisition Co. in a stock-for-stock transaction that will give the combined entity a market capitalization of $3.2 billion, the company said. The transaction, which boosts the parent company’s assets and cash position, is designed to cut the amount of external financing the heavily indebted operating company, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., might need in a bankruptcy, thereby reducing any dilution of existing investors.

A Texas jury has found Credit Suisse fraudulently enticed investors to back a $540 million loan for the Lake Las Vegas resort, only to have the borrower quickly default, Reuters reported yesterday. The jury set damages at $40 million, according to court documents filed on Friday in state court in Dallas. Zurich-based Credit Suisse was found to have used inflated appraisals to convince an affiliate of Highland Capital Management in 2007 to refinance the Nevada resort community, which sought chapter 11 protection a year later.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. today agreed to acquire affiliate Caesars Acquisition Co. in a stock-for-stock merger that will better position the $18.4 billion debt load of its largest unit, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The acquisition also will consolidate the parent company’s stake in properties such as Planet Hollywood and Bally’s Las Vegas, online gambling operations and other assets it owns with Caesars Acquisition. Under the terms of the deal, Caesars Entertainment shareholders will own about 62 percent of the combined company, while Caesars Acquisition shareholders will own about 38 percent. The deal marks the latest effort by Caesars Entertainment and its private-equity backers, Apollo Global Management LLC and TPG Capital LLP, to shore up the company’s finances after the casino company’s 2008 leveraged buyout. Hamlet Holdings LLC, an entity controlled by Apollo and TPG, has a 66 percent stake in Caesars Acquisition.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn offered $20 million in financing on Thursday to keep the Trump Taj Mahal from becoming the fifth casino to close this year in New Jersey's troubled Atlantic City, once the only major destination for gamblers on the U.S. East Coast, Reuters reported yesterday. The Taj, owned by bankrupt Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., is slated to close on Saturday. It is not clear how long the additional financing from Icahn, who holds the mortgage to the property, could keep the Taj operating. The offer came after the union representing casino workers claimed that Icahn had "gone back on his word" by scrapping a more far-reaching, last-minute deal — signed by both the union and the company — to save the Taj.

A Delaware judge said that Caesars Entertainment Corp., the casino operator struggling to restructure $18.4 billion of debt, must face trial sooner than usual on whether a receiver should take control of its main operating unit, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The trial still won’t come before a mid-January hearing on a request by Caesars to dismiss a creditor group’s lawsuit or move it and a related case to a court in New York, Chancery Judge Sam Glasscock said yesterday. That would be around the time Caesars has considered putting its operating unit into bankruptcy, which would automatically halt the lawsuit. As the legal maneuvers proceed in Delaware, the company and its senior creditors are negotiating how to reshape Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. into separate entities, one to own property and one to manage casinos and hotels. Those talks have contemplated putting the operating company into chapter 11 on Jan. 15, according to documents released by one creditor group that had been involved in the discussions.

Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. (CEOC), the main operating unit of Caesars Entertainment Corp., said that it will not pay $225 million in bond interest payments, triggering a default on its $18.4 billion debt, Reuters reported yesterday. CEOC has elected not to pay interest payments due Dec. 15 in light of the ongoing discussions with the first lien bondholders with respect to a restructuring, the company said in a regulatory filing on Monday. Caesars has been waging a battle with its creditors over its efforts to restructure operations, but those conversations have not led to a deal. A group of first-lien bank lenders and a bondholder released details of negotiations of the debt-restructuring plan after a confidentiality agreement ended today.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. plans to skip a $225 million interest payment to junior creditors of its biggest unit yesterday as the gaming company looks to wrap up a debt restructuring agreement with senior bondholders, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The most indebted U.S. casino operator will enter a 30-day grace period to make the coupon payment to owners of $4.5 billion of 10 percent of second-lien notes due December 2018. Las Vegas-based Caesars won’t make the payment while it’s seeking to resolve a plan to cut borrowings of the unit, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., with its most-senior bondholders. Caesars and a group of first-lien bondholders are nearing the conclusion of negotiations to put the operating company into a Delaware bankruptcy court by Jan. 15. The new company would emerge from chapter 11 proceedings as a real estate investment trust.