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Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., the bankrupt owner of the Trump Taj Mahal, offered to restore health insurance to its employees for at least two years in a last-ditch bid to keep the Atlantic City casino open, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday. In a letter dated on Friday, Trump Chief Executive Officer Robert F. Griffin asked union official Robert McDevitt to drop an appeal of a court ruling that allowed the casino to cancel its labor contract. In return, the company would restore health care and contribute 81 cents per hour worked by an employee to a pension. Last week, Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross ordered company officials to justify their continued control of the company or risk having a trustee appointed to liquidate Trump entertainment’s assets. The judge scheduled a hearing for Dec. 4. Trump Entertainment faces continuing losses and doesn’t have financing to support its reorganization efforts, so “there is no reasonable likelihood of rehabilitation,” Gross said in a Nov. 19 order. The Trump Taj Mahal is set to close on Dec. 12, becoming the fifth Atlantic City casino to shutter this year.

Lawyers representing Atlantic City, N.J.'s Revel Casino Hotel will meet with a handful of its creditors today to try to salvage a deal to sell the shuttered boardwalk resort to a Canadian private-equity firm, the Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The lawyers announced the meeting at the conclusion of a bankruptcy court hearing held on Friday morning after the private-equity firm, Brookfield Capital Partners LP, threatened to back out of a $110 million deal to buy the property. The deal hangs on the outcome of negotiations with bondholders who financed the construction of Revels' custom-built power plant.

A showdown between the Atlantic City, N.J.'s shuttered Revel Casino Hotel and the bondholders behind its custom-built power plant is threatening to unravel a $110 million deal to sell the boardwalk resort to a Canadian private-equity firm, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. According to a spokesperson for Brookfield Capital Partners LP, which earlier this year won a bankruptcy auction to buy the property for $110 million, the firm has informed Revel that it plans to pull out of the deal over payments related to the property's custom-built power plant. The power plant, operated by ACR Energy Partners LLC, is located next to the resort and is Revel's only source of both electricity as well as hot water, court papers show.

A federal judge is threatening to boot Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. out of chapter 11 protection unless there’s “a firm indication” that the company’s sole casino, the Trump Taj Mahal, is going to stay open, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In a signed order, Judge Kevin Gross, who is presiding over the gambling company’s Chapter 11 reorganization effort, cited the lack of a “reasonable likelihood of rehabilitation” for Trump Entertainment, which has said it would close the Trump Taj Mahal on Dec. 12. If that happens, the Trump Taj Mahal will be the fifth Atlantic City boardwalk casino to close down this year, and Trump Entertainment will find itself in a chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

Brookfield Asset Management is dropping its plan to buy Atlantic City's Revel Hotel Casino for $110 million, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported today. The deal fell apart over how much Brookfield would have to pay in fixed costs to the owners of the $129 million utility plant next door that chills water for air-conditioning, provides hot water, and distributes electricity to the $2.4 billion Revel. The sale of Revel, which closed Sept. 2, putting more than 3,000 people of out of work, was expected to be completed by the end of this year. It was not clear when Brookfield, which intended to operate it as a casino, would have reopened it.

Trump Entertainment Resorts said that it expects to close down the Trump Taj Mahal resort/casino in Atlantic City, N.J., by Dec. 12, according to an amended disclosure statement filed in the bankruptcy court overseeing the company’s chapter 11 case, Forbes.com reported yesterday. Separately, the unsecured creditors’ committee in the case has filed a motion on Nov. 14 seeking to terminate the company’s exclusive period to file a reorganization plan so that the panel could file its own plan for the company. The committee’s plan would transfer the collateral securing the company’s first-lien debt to the company’s first-lien lender, (a lender controlled by Carl Icahn), pay administrative and priority claims out of the company’s $30 million of cash on hand, and transfer the company’s remaining assets (including excess cash and causes of action) to a liquidating trust for distribution to unsecured creditors (which would include Icahn’s first-lien deficiency claim).

Caesars Entertainment Corp. on Friday cited "substantial doubt" about the ability of the casino company's main operating unit to survive past next year without restructuring its debt, possibly through chapter 11 bankruptcy, Reuters reported on Friday. In a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the company said that its Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. unit currently has enough liquidity to survive, but would need additional funding by the fourth quarter of 2015 "absent a refinancing, amendment, private restructuring, or a reorganization under chapter 11." Earlier this week Bloomberg News reported that Caesars was nearing a deal with Elliott Management Corp. and Pacific Investment Management Co., investment funds that own a large amount of the gaming company's senior debt, to back a plan to put the operating unit into bankruptcy in January.

Trump Entertainment Resorts said yesterday that it will close the Taj Mahal on Dec. 12 if its main union doesn't drop an appeal of a court-ordered savings package, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The union is appealing a bankruptcy court order that terminated the union contract, canceling health insurance and pension coverage. If the appeal isn't withdrawn by the end of the month, the casino said that it will close and 3,000 jobs will be lost.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. have reached an agreement with key senior creditors on the outline of a debt restructuring plan that includes a pre-packaged bankruptcy for its largest unit as soon as January, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Under the plan being negotiated by first-lien bondholders including Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. and Pacific Investment Management Co., the casino company would put its Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. unit into chapter 11 proceedings as soon as Jan. 14. The proposal, which is the product of eight weeks of talks between the casino operator and its creditors, would help tame a $22.9 billion debt burden taken on six years ago in one of the biggest leveraged buyouts ever. Caesars, taken private by Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital for $30.7 billion in 2008, has lost money every year since 2009.

As cash quickly runs out to keep Atlantic City’s Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort open, a bankruptcy judge refused to sign off on the outlines of a bankruptcy-exit plan for owner Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., telling the casino operator to come back next week with a firmer vision for the casino’s future, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. "My concern is that there is simply too much immediate uncertainty," Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross said during a Wednesday hearing. "There needs to be something in place that provides comfort that there is really a path to a plan." Under its current proposal, Trump Entertainment's secured lenders — entities controlled by billionaire Carl Icahn — would swap some of their $292 million in debt for the equity in a reorganized company. The Icahn entities have also agreed to extend a $100 million loan to get the ailing gambling operation on its feet. The plan, however, depends on the company securing $175 million in tax benefits and other aid from city, county or state government agencies.