How One Man Sold Las Vegas to Wall Street

Steve Wynn built a multi-billion dollar Las Vegas casino empire twice, and almost none of the money was his.

In 1967 he bought three percent of the Frontier Hotel with $45,000 he had borrowed. In 2000 Kirk Kerkorian bought his company for $6.4 billion. The play in between never really changed. Acquire something he couldn't afford using capital somebody else arranged, then turn it into an asset worth more than anyone expected.

The men who made that possible are mostly missing from the legend. E. Parry Thomas ran the one bank in America willing to lend to a casino, pushed $230 million in Teamsters pension money through it, and personally set up Wynn's first land deal at roughly half what the lot was worth. Michael Milken handed him $125 million after a single meeting, then built the $540 million junk bond stack behind the Mirage, with a coverage ratio clause that left the construction risk sitting on bondholders and Wynn's upside uncapped.

What Wynn actually changed was who got to finance a casino. Pension funds and insurance companies wouldn't touch gaming paper in 1978. By the end of the eighties they were buying it, and legalized gambling started spreading across the country.

He put up his name on every one of those deals. That was the collateral.

A film by Collateral Partners.

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Learn more about Collateral Partners: https://www.collateral.com?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=financial_storytelling_steve_wynn&utm_term=finance_youtube&utm_content=episode_steve_wynn

CHAPTERS
00:00 Blowing Up the Dunes
02:25 The Bingo Hall Empire of Mike Wynn
05:06 A Ten-Year-Old's First Trip to Las Vegas
06:51 A Deathbed and $200,000 in Debt
08:13 Buying Into the Frontier, a Mob Front
09:55 E. Parry Thomas, the Banker Who Financed Vegas
11:50 The Caesars Palace Land Flip
14:06 Taking Over the Golden Nugget
18:11 Michael Milken and the Junk Bond Machine
24:00 The Mirage: A $630 Million All-In Bet
28:01 How the Junk Bond Structure Actually Worked
30:52 Highest Paid Executive in America
31:44 The $1.6 Billion Bellagio
33:31 The Temper, the Mob, and the Kidnapping
38:18 Kerkorian Buys the Empire for $6.4 Billion
39:27 What Wynn Actually Risked

Follow Niko on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niko-ludwig-190706150/
Learn more about Collateral Partners: https://www.collateral.com/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=financial_storytelling_steve_wynn&utm_term=finance_youtube&utm_content=episode_steve_wynn

SOURCES:
Running Scared: The Life and Treacherous Times of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn by John L. Smith
Winner Takes All: How Casino Mogul Steve Wynn Won and Lost the High Stakes Gamble to Own Las Vegas by Christina Binkley
The Predators' Ball by Connie Bruck
Las Vegas Sun, Las Vegas Review-Journal, KSNV News3LV, The Neon Museum

#SteveWynn #LasVegas #FinanceDocumentary