HotelChatter || Steve Wynn Still Bitter About Mirage 'Takeover'

Chrstina Binkley, who used to cover the hotel/casino beat for the WSJ, is publishing a book in March called, "Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman and the Race to Own Las Vegas."

While Wynn agreed to cooperate with the book, Binkely said he went crazy when she suggested that Wynn was powerless against Kerkorian in his raid on the Mirage properties which Wynn had built up.

Binkley relates that during a tense meeting with the mogul to discuss her sober account of his ups and downs in Sin City, a "big and loud" Wynn yelled, "It was a friendly deal!" She writes that Wynn's thinking was, "Why can't I get it through my thick skull? Suggesting in this book that it was a hostile takeover would be 'illegal.' Do I understand what he's getting at? . . . We will be finished, he and I. No more interviews. Steve will be mad. He will Cut. Me. Off.

But most people will agree that Kerkorian "tore" the Mirage properties from Wynn for $6.4 billion in 2000. Additionally, Time magazine reported back then that Mirage shareholders were bringing class action lawsuits to demand that Wynn consider all bids.

Yet Wynn maintains it was the happiest day of his life saying, "I made more money in five minutes than I made in 27 years." God, if only we had these types of problems....

Related Stories:
· Steve Wynn coverage [HotelChatter]

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