Icahn sold unfinished Las Vegas casino
The former owner of the Trump Taj Mahal sold an unfinished Las Vegas Strip casino facility for US$600 million.
US.- Billionaire Carl Icahn has sold the unfinished Fontainebleau Las Vegas, located on the Las Vegas Strip to an investor group led by New York-based developer Steven Witkoff for US$600 million. The property was initially acquired by Icahn in 2010 for US$148 million.
“This successful investment is an example of our ‘contrarian’ modus operandi, which seeks to invest in undervalued assets and businesses, nurture, guide and improve their condition and operations, and ultimately sell them for large gains,” said Icahn in a statement late on Tuesday. The billionaire, who still owns the Tropicana casino in Atlantic City, had already sold a gambling property earlier this year, when the Trump Taj Mahal was acquired by Hard Rock International for an undisclosed amount of money.
The Fontainebleau Las Vegas was bought in February 2010 for US$148 million, a year after the former developers that were building the US$2.9 billion 68-story hotel-casino filed for bankruptcy.
As Forbes revealed, Witkoff is betting on Las Vegas as it is slowly showing signs of recovery: “[The 27 acre property] is one of the best physical assets in the country, which is one of the reasons we were attracted to it,” he said. “We acquired a well-designed, structurally sound integrated resort at a significant discount to both replacement cost and the implied public market valuations of comparable Las Vegas Strip resorts.”
