Trump Entertainment Resorts

Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. announced today that it has emerged from Chapter 11 reorganization, days after the New Jersey Casino Control Commission approved a plan that lets Donald J. Trump and his daughter Ivanka retain at least partial control of the company that bears their name.    - Inquirer staff  

The weakest link of the Trump casino triumvirate in Atlantic City - Trump Marina - was sold Monday to the restaurant-and-retail company Landry's Inc., of Houston. The underperforming casino was sold for $38 million, about one-eighth of its fetching price less than three years ago, when it was being touted as a Margaritaville-themed casino. "I'm very happy about it," Donald Trump said by phone Monday from his office in New York. Trump owns 10 percent of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., which still owns the Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza Casino at the Shore resort.

A shift manager at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort was fatally shot yesterday in a storage room just off the casino floor. Minutes later, a suspect identified by state police as a 57-year-old man from Norristown, Pa., was arrested inside the casino's parking garage. Police also recovered a handgun that may have been used in the shooting. The manager, identified by a company official as Ray Kot of Egg Harbor Township, was pronounced dead about 5:30 p.m., 2 1/2 hours after the shooting.

Donald J. Trump is looking to two Atlantic City veterans to turn his struggling casino business around. Mark Juliano, who resigned as president of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Friday, will replace Mark Brown as head of the three Trump casinos in Atlantic City, according to Trump. Juliano's last day at Caesars Palace is July 31. "I'm very happy about it," Trump said yesterday in a phone interview from New York. "It's fantastic. There's no better team in the business. " Juliano, 50, joins James B. Perry, who was tapped by Trump earlier this month to become chief executive officer of New York-based Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., which operates a riverboat casino in Gary, Ind., in addition to the three casinos in Atlantic City.

Donald J. Trump characterizes billionaire financier Carl Icahn as a good friend but says that his friend doesn't spend money. "I've known him for many years," Trump told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing in Camden this morning, referring to the man who has put forth a plan to bring Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. out of its third bankruptcy. But, Trump continued as he answered a question from one of Icahn's lawyers, "He doesn't spend any money. If he spends 10 cents, it's a major event.

Trump Entertainment Resorts has come out a loser in the Pennsylvania casino market. Again. The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday rejected the two-year bid of the company - known for its three Atlantic City casinos and its high-profile partial owner Donald Trump - to overturn a 2006 ruling by the state Gaming Control Board. Trump, using the name Keystone Redevelopment Partners LLC, pitched a casino at the old Budd Co. plant in Nicetown. The board rejected Trump's bid for one of two casino licenses in Philadelphia, in part because it worried he would use the local casino to draw customers to Atlantic City, where the tax rate on gambling profits is lower.

Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., which runs three Atlantic City casinos, says it may seek a hotel partner to rehab the Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, Bloomberg News reported today. One possibility is a joint venture that would help provide money to, among other improvements, add 560 rooms to the 940-room Trump Plaza, chief executive Mark Juliano told the news service in an interview. This would help the company win more convention business, as the Shore gambling resort seeks to fill the gap created by gamblers' going to nearby states that also offer gambling, Juliano told Bloomberg.

TRENTON - Ready. Set. Go get married! A couple of New Jersey lawmakers are proposing a bill to eliminate the state's 72-hour waiting period for couples seeking a license to wed. Assemblyman Louis Greenwald, D-Voorhees, and state Sen. Nicholas Scutari, D-Linden, argue that the law is antiquated - it dates back to 1934 - and getting rid of it would give New Jersey a competitive edge in the wedding-tourism market. Other nearby states, like New York and Delaware, have only 24-hour waiting periods.

Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., owner of two casino hotels in Atlantic City, is about to enter a partnership with another firm to offer online gambling. Trump Entertainment has "determined that such a joint venture represents the most advantageous way for the company to participate in opportunities in online gaming at minimal cost to the company," according to an Oct. 14 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump Entertainment would own 10 percent of the new venture.

Even Pamela Anderson couldn't upstage Donald J. Trump. The reality-TV star and developer celebrated his 59th birthday at the Trump Taj Mahal the only way he knows how: over the top. "Look at this crowd. Wow!" Trump said Saturday as he worked the few hundred guests on the Boardwalk into a frenzy. He stood on a stage in the shape of a 15-foot, three-tier cake. His casino company, Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. It has a new board, a new name, and fresh cash.

ATLANTIC CITY - When Atlantic City rolled out its "Always Turned On" tourism slogan in 2003, critics felt it was a little, well, risque. Nine years later, they've fixed that. The new slogan? "Do AC!" It's part of a $30 million casino-funded campaign to promote the nation's second-largest gambling resort through a group called the Atlantic City Alliance. The slogan, written by an agency the alliance hired, tested well, according to Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority president Jeff Vasser.

In the Region House to study refinery closures Rep. Patrick Meehan (R., Pa.) said Wednesday that the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence would examine how nationwide refinery closures, including three in the Philadelphia area, could cause supply shortages and threaten critical infrastructure. Meehan said the panel's inquiry would help explain the homeland security consequences of the decline in U.S. refining capacity. Sunoco Inc. has shut its Marcus Hook refinery and announced plans to idle its Philadelphia plant if a buyer cannot be found.

ATLANTIC CITY - Ho-ho-whoa! Just in time for Christmas, New Jersey casino regulators ruled Friday that it would be all right to have a strip club inside the Taj Mahal Casino Resort. The so-called "gentlemen's club" would be the first in an Atlantic City casino since legalized gambling began here 33 years ago. The ruling by the Division of Gaming Enforcement would permit Scores to open a $3 million club at the Taj, provided the company can obtain a liquor license. The project "will give us additional entertainment, food, beverage, and retail amenities that will be great additions to the property," said Robert Griffin, chief executive officer of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. In a directive that bordered on an anatomy lesson, the division explicitly detailed what would need to stay covered.

TRENTON - Ready. Set. Go get married! A couple of New Jersey lawmakers are proposing a bill to eliminate the state's 72-hour waiting period for couples seeking a license to wed. Assemblyman Louis Greenwald, D-Voorhees, and state Sen. Nicholas Scutari, D-Linden, argue that the law is antiquated - it dates back to 1934 - and getting rid of it would give New Jersey a competitive edge in the wedding-tourism market. Other nearby states, like New York and Delaware, have only 24-hour waiting periods.

Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., owner of two casino hotels in Atlantic City, is about to enter a partnership with another firm to offer online gambling. Trump Entertainment has "determined that such a joint venture represents the most advantageous way for the company to participate in opportunities in online gaming at minimal cost to the company," according to an Oct. 14 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump Entertainment would own 10 percent of the new venture.

TRENTON - New Jersey regulators are considering a request from two casinos to post armed guards on their premises following several high-profile killings. The Division of Gaming Enforcement is studying a request from Trump Entertainment Resorts to allow it to post armed guards on the casino floor and in other areas. There have been two fatal carjackings from the parking garage of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in the last 16 months. The request would let all 11 casinos use armed guards, even though executives of several others say they do not favor such a step.

AS SURE as higher hotel-room rates and a busier Boardwalk mark the summer season in Atlantic City, so does the annual warm-weather proliferation of extended-run productions in the casinos. This summer, five gambling dens are sponsoring a wide variety of presentations. However, all but one have been seen before, three at different gaming halls. That is likely a function of the prolonged economic funk in which AyCee's gaming industry has been mired since the middle of the George W. Bush administration.

ATLANTIC CITY - The financially troubled Trump Marina Hotel Casino officially changed hands Monday, as the New Jersey Casino Control Commission gave unanimous approval to its sale to Houston-based Landry's Restaurants Inc. And with that, Landry's chairman, CEO, and sole owner, Tilman J. Fertitta, let out a Texas-size sigh of relief, saying he was looking forward to transforming the 26-year-old casino into the Golden Nugget Atlantic City in...

ATLANTIC CITY - The financially troubled Trump Marina Hotel Casino here officially changed hands after the New Jersey Casino Control Commission gave its approval early this afternoon. Houston-based Landry's Restaurants Inc.'s chairman, chief executive officer and sole owner, Tilman J. Fertitta, testified before the commission before it issued a 3-0 vote. (There are two vacancies on the commission.) The sale was announced Feb. 14, between Landry's and Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. for about $38 million.

IT'S HARDLY the biggest booking in Atlantic City history - after all, Madonna, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Rudy Vallee, Al Jolson and John Philip Sousa have all made the Boardwalk scene. But tomorrow night's appearance by one-man sideshow Charlie Sheen at Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort certainly is AyCee's biggest pop-culture event of the still-young year. As you might have heard, the former "Two and a Half Men" star and Olympic-grade partyer has been out on the road with his "Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not An Option" tour.