Caesars Entertainment Corp. said it would pay an undisclosed amount in a settlement with creditors of its bankrupt operating unit after a court-appointed bankruptcy investigator said Caesars may be responsible for as much as $5.1 billion in damages.
The probe stemmed from Caesars' formation of the Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. (CEOC) and its subsequent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing last year. Some creditors of CEOC took issue with the restructuring plan from Caesars Entertainment and its owners, Apollo Global Management and TPG. Creditors objected to the movement of assets between Caesars’ various financial affiliates.
“Each of the challenged transactions was undertaken to strengthen CEOC and provide it with the liquidity and resources required to sustain it and give it time to recover from unprecedented market challenges. These transactions provided immense and indisputable benefit to CEOC and its creditors, who received billions of dollars in principal and interest payments,” Caesars Entertainment said in a March 15 statement. “Despite these disagreements, Caesars Entertainment has agreed to contribute substantial and appropriate value to creditors in settlement of those issues as part of the plan of reorganization that is currently on file.”
Court-appointed bankruptcy investigator Richard Davis said Caesars' actions resulted in damages of $3.6 billion to $5.1 billion (Davis’s findings were first reported in the Wall Street Journal).
In 2008, Apollo and TPG took Caesars (then known as Harrah’s Entertainment) private in a $30 billion leveraged buyout. The company was renamed Caesars Entertainment two years later and went public in 2012.