Msnbchow Much Money Did Trump University Make?
How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, only Still Earned Millions
ATLANTIC CITY — The Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel is at present closed, its windows clouded over by sea salt. Simply a faint outline of the gilt letters spelling out T-R-U-M-P remains visible on the exterior of what was once this city'southward premier casino.
Non far away, the long-failing Trump Marina Hotel Casino was sold at a major loss 5 years ago and is now known as the Gold Nugget.
At the nearly deserted eastern end of the boardwalk, the Trump Taj Mahal, now nether new ownership, is all that remains of the casino empire Donald J. Trump assembled here more than a quarter-century ago. Years of neglect evidence: The carpets are frayed and dust-coated chandeliers dangle above the few customers there to play the penny slot machines.
On the presidential campaign trail, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, often boasts of his success in Atlantic Urban center, of how he outwitted the Wall Street firms that financed his casinos and rode the value of his name to riches. A key argument of his candidacy is that he would bring the aforementioned business organization prowess to the Oval Office, doing for America what he did for his companies.
"Atlantic Urban center fueled a lot of growth for me," Mr. Trump said in an interview in May, summing up his 25-year history hither. "The coin I took out of there was incredible."
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His audacious personality and opulent properties brought attention — and endless players — to Atlantic City equally it sought to overtake Las Vegas as the land's gambling capital. But a shut test of regulatory reviews, courtroom records and security filings by The New York Times leaves fiddling doubt that Mr. Trump's casino business was a protracted failure. Though he at present says his casinos were overtaken by the same tidal wave that somewhen slammed this seaside city's gambling industry, in reality he was failing in Atlantic Urban center long before Atlantic City itself was failing.
But even as his companies did poorly, Mr. Trump did well. He put upwards petty of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures vicious on investors and others who had bet on his business organisation acumen.
In iii interviews with The Times since late April, Mr. Trump best-selling in general terms that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He did not recall details about some issues, but did not question The Times's findings. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered near his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Mr. Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such loftier interest rates — after telling regulators he would non — that the businesses had nigh no chance to succeed.
Paradigm
His casino companies made 4 trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Mr. Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to describe in plenty gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos here thrived, Mr. Trump'south lagged, posting huge losses twelvemonth after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than than $ane.v billion.
All the while, Mr. Trump received copious amounts for himself, with the help of a compliant board. In one case, The Times plant, Mr. Trump pulled more $1 million from his failing public company, describing the transaction in securities filings in ways that may have been illegal, according to legal experts.
Mr. Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect fourth dimension. The record, still, shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role.
There are those here who fondly remember Mr. Trump'south showmanship, the thousands he employed in a struggling city, and the tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue his casinos generated.
"He was a great person for the company," said Scott C. Butera, the president of Mr. Trump'southward visitor at the fourth dimension of its 2004 bankruptcy. "With his oversight, his brand and marketing, he's really adept."
Many others were glad to see him go.
"He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn't pay them," said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey's top casino regulator in the early 1990s. "So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn't, 'Sorry to come across you lot go.' Information technology was, 'How fast can you get the hell out of here?'"
Epitome
'It'south truly going to be an incredible place' — 1990
Donald Trump darted beneath the 70 gold-tipped minarets and 9 carved elephants that lined the roof, through the lobby and across the casino flooring, seemingly oblivious to the spectators' cries of "Donald, Donald," and the gamblers clutching bricks of $100 bills at the blackjack tables.
It was Apr 1990, and Mr. Trump was officially opening his third gambling resort in Atlantic Metropolis, the biggest project of his career: the $1 billion Trump Taj Mahal.
"Information technology's truly going to be an incredible place," he told reporters. "We're calling it the eighth wonder of the world."
The Taj was certainly of outsize proportions: Its 42-story tower was New Bailiwick of jersey's tallest building, and the casino was the world's largest.
In a remarkably brusque fourth dimension, Mr. Trump had get a commanding figure in Atlantic City, with his casinos accounting for nigh a third of its gambling revenues and employing more than 8,000 people.
Trump Plaza came start. In the early 1980s, Mr. Trump gained control of a prime spot on the boardwalk. Unable to become financing to build a casino, he forged a partnership with Harrah's Entertainment, a national gambling operator.
Harrah's agreed to provide Mr. Trump, who did not put any additional coin into the deal, with $220 meg in financing to build the project, to pay him a $24 million structure management fee and to give him one-half the profits.
The 39-story Harrah's at Trump Plaza opened in 1984.
From the start, the partners were at odds over its marketing and whose proper noun should be paramount.
"Information technology wasn't a well-designed partnership," said Philip G. Satre, the retired chairman of Harrah's. "We were a big company with an institutional arroyo to running a business, and he was a existent estate entrepreneur who kind of shot from the hip."
Then Mr. Trump bought Hilton'south nearly completed casino in the marina district for $320 million, calling it Trump Castle. His company issued $352 million in bonds to end structure and open the casino, and tacked on an boosted $32 meg. That casino opened in 1985 and competed straight against his partner's first casino, Harrah'south Marina.
The following twelvemonth, Harrah's scuttled its partnership with Mr. Trump and sold him its stake in Trump Plaza for more than $220 one thousand thousand.
Adjacent Mr. Trump went subsequently the biggest casino of all, the Taj Mahal, which Resorts International, builder of Atlantic Urban center's beginning casino, was erecting. After buying a decision-making involvement in Resorts from the estate of its founder, Mr. Trump battled the talk show host Merv Griffin for control of the visitor.
In the cease, Mr. Griffin got the company, while Mr. Trump won the nonetheless-unfinished Taj Mahal.
Fifty-fifty before the Taj opened, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission was concerned nigh the casino's viability given its rapidly escalating costs and considered revoking its operating license. Regulators closely monitored the financial operation of the Trump casinos and the programmer's empire.
Mr. Trump told the commission in 1988 that he could rein in expenses, because conventional lenders were lining up to requite him money at depression interest rates. He said he abhorred junk bonds, which were then popular, because they carried a bigger risk of default and thus came with college interest rates.
Inside months, he reversed course, issuing $675 million worth of junk bonds, with a 14 percent involvement rate, to finish construction and get the Taj open up. In recent interviews, Mr. Trump has said that with each financing he routinely took money out of the casinos to invest in Manhattan real estate. Full debt on the Taj exceeded $820 1000000.
Less than two weeks before the casino opened, Marvin B. Roffman, a casino analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott, an investment firm based in Philadelphia, told The Wall Street Journal that the Taj would demand to reap $1.iii million a 24-hour interval but to make its interest payments, a sum no casino had ever achieved.
"The market place merely isn't there," Mr. Roffman told The Periodical.
Mr. Trump retaliated, demanding that Janney Montgomery Scott fire Mr. Roffman. Information technology did.
"It was doomed fashion earlier the start," said West. Bucky Howard, who was promoted by Mr. Trump to president of the Taj v days after information technology opened, in a recent interview. "I told him it was going to fail. The Taj was underfunded."
Almost immediately, Mr. Trump had problem making the debt payments on the Taj and his other casinos. It was as well clear that the Taj was cannibalizing the Castle and the Plaza, whose combined gambling revenues dropped by $58 one thousand thousand the yr it opened.
After more than than tripling as new casinos opened through the 1980s, gambling revenues in Atlantic City flattened in 1990, rising by just 1.35 percent, every bit gamblers grew more cautious in light of a national recession. All were hurt, recalled Mr. Perskie, the casino regulator, only none were in the catastrophic financial shape of Mr. Trump's.
At the same fourth dimension, Mr. Trump'southward real estate empire in Manhattan, where the recession cut holding values, was also declining.
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In an August 1990 report, New Bailiwick of jersey regulators noted the "sheer book of debt" on Mr. Trump'southward holdings: $3.iv billion, including $ane.3 billion on the casinos and $832.5 1000000 in loans personally guaranteed by Mr. Trump. Regulators warned then that "the possibility of a consummate fiscal collapse of the Trump Organization was not out of the question."
The Taj Mahal missed its November debt payment. The Castle was also belatedly.
By December 1990, when Mr. Trump needed to make an $18.iv 1000000 interest payment, his male parent, Fred C. Trump, sent a lawyer to the Castle to buy $3.3 million in fries, to provide him with an infusion of cash. The younger Mr. Trump made the payment, but the Casino Control Committee fined the Castle $65,000 for what had amounted to an illegal loan.
Every bit all of his ventures neared plummet, Mr. Trump's lenders insisted that he submit a business concern program, appoint a chief financial officeholder for the Trump Organization and sell, amid other things, the Trump Shuttle airline, his yacht and his pale in New York City'southward Plaza Hotel, which also filed for bankruptcy protection. They also put him on a $450,000-a-month budget for personal and household expenses.
Merely over a year later on it opened, the Taj Mahal was in defalcation courtroom, followed in 1992 by both the Plaza and the Castle. In the program that was worked out, Mr. Trump ceded to the lenders a l percent pale in the businesses in return for lower interest rates. The lenders agreed to defer certain principal and involvement payments and hold off on personal claims against Mr. Trump for five years. But there was little or no reduction in the enormous debts that would plague his gambling empire far into the future.
Mr. Trump now says he looks back on the period as his golden era in the casino business.
"Early, I took a lot of money out of the casinos with the financings and the things we practise," he said in a contempo interview. "Atlantic City was a very good cash moo-cow for me for a long time."
Others were hurt.
"He helped expand Atlantic City, but he just did non put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent," said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant and a old casino executive at Resorts International. "When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, simply he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal."
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties most collapsed when Mr. Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on the casino, she said, and her father received simply 30 cents on the dollar.
"Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of picayune guys, i of them being my male parent," said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. "He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects. He says he'll make America great again, but his by shows the complete opposite of that."
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'It will be the best' — 1996
Donald Trump has said that his brushes with financial disaster in the early 1990s reminded him of a lesson his male parent had taught him: Practice non get out yourself on the claw for loans.
"My father knew, similar I knew, yous don't personally guarantee," Mr. Trump is quoted saying in "TrumpNation: The Fine art of Being the Donald," by Timothy L. O'Brien, a quondam reporter for The Times. "I've told people I didn't follow my ain communication."
His agreements with lenders and the 2 casino bankruptcies in those years withal left Mr. Trump personally responsible for more than than $100 million in debt, and his agreements had simply delayed the 24-hour interval of reckoning to June 30, 1995.
He dealt with that danger by beginning shifting much of his personal debt onto his casinos, then onto a new group: shareholders.
Step 1 came in 1993, when his visitor sold more junk bonds, calculation some other $100 million in debt to the Trump Plaza casino. More than one-half of the new money went to pay off Mr. Trump's unrelated personal loans.
Then, in June 1995, with the risk of being forced into bankruptcy just weeks away, Mr. Trump shifted buying of the Plaza casino to a new, publicly traded visitor: Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. In the initial public offering, 10 million shares were sold at $14. At the same time, the company also sold another $155 meg in junk bonds, at a 15.five per centum interest charge per unit.
Becoming a public visitor encumbered Mr. Trump with the responsibility of putting shareholders' interests first. Merely Mr. Trump, the largest shareholder and chairman of the board, could generally meet that obligation past obtaining approval from his board of directors and disclosing financial details in securities filings. The board'due south three outside members were widely seen every bit bowing to his wishes.
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A week later the initial public offering, the new company began using some of the most $300 one thousand thousand it had raised to clear Mr. Trump'south personal debts. During his financial pinch two years earlier, Chemical Depository financial institution had forced Mr. Trump to surrender his ownership of the Trump Regency, a hotel adjacent to the Trump Plaza. He held an choice to buy it back for $60 1000000, which included debt on the hotel and $35.ix 1000000 that he personally owed the bank from his purchase of a Manhattan property. The new company exercised that option, in effect transferring Mr. Trump'due south debt to its own balance sail.
In 1996, the public company issued more stock and sold $1.1 billion in junk bonds. The coin was used in office to pay off $330 one thousand thousand in bonds on the Plaza that had been guaranteed by a company Mr. Trump controlled, too every bit most $thirty million that Mr. Trump personally owed to two banks. The company too bought the Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Castle — presently renamed the Trump Marina — shifting more of Mr. Trump'due south debt to shareholders.
Mr. Trump celebrated his 50th birthday that June at the Taj Mahal, with the Beach Boys onstage. A flurry of news articles said he was "dorsum"; some even quoted Mr. Roffman, the analyst whom Mr. Trump had gotten fired, giving Mr. Trump credit for turning things effectually. (Mr. Roffman had won a $750,000 arbitration award from Janney Montgomery for his dismissal and settled a lawsuit confronting Mr. Trump for an undisclosed sum.)
But some analysts — and the stock market — saw the $525 one thousand thousand that the public company had paid for the Castle as as well much. The stock began a long slide, falling from well-nigh $35 a share earlier the sale, to $12 months later. Shareholders sued, alleging that the Castle's purchase price, which included roughly $175 1000000 in cash to Mr. Trump's private property company, had been a "gross and unjustified" sweetheart deal for Mr. Trump. (He later settled the suit.)
Another crucial borderline came in 1998. Mr. Trump personally owed $13.five meg to Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, the investment bank that had underwritten the initial public offer in 1995; under the terms of that loan, he was in danger of defaulting, because the stock price of Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts had fallen so low. A default would take made him lose control of the visitor. Instead, the casino visitor lent him the money to pay back the bankers. A shareholder sued, accusing the board of directors of breaching its fiduciary responsibility.
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"T.H.C.R. is a casino and amusement company," the lawsuit, filed in 1999, said. "It is not in the business of loaning coin. The company badly needed (and needs) cash to shore up its deteriorating fiscal condition." (The conform was dropped in 2000, shortly after Mr. Trump paid the company back.)
Indeed, the company posted losses of $66 million in 1996, $42 million in 1997 and $40 meg in 1998. Those losses would continue.
Nonetheless, Mr. Trump made money, receiving $one meg a year for what was essentially a part-time job. In 1996, he was paid a $5 one thousand thousand bonus. The public company lent him $3 meg to embrace costs he had incurred while exploring whether to open a casino in Indiana, so forgave the loan when the stock met price targets.
The casino visitor leased part space in Trump Belfry in Manhattan, and Mr. Trump's other businesses were paid to entertain its "high-end customers." It was later alleged in a lawsuit that at least part of the money was paid for big-proper noun performers, including Celine Dion, Tony Bennett and Billy Joel, who had appeared at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump's resort in Palm Beach, Fla. In its response, Mr. Trump's company did not challenge that accusation.
Trump casinos reported paying about $300,000 a year in "pilot costs" to transport high rollers in Mr. Trump's jet. The company never disclosed in securities filings but how much the jet was used for casino purposes.
The public company's collapse began in 1999. Merely three years after spending well-nigh $60 million to buy back the erstwhile Trump Regency Hotel and pumping in millions for renovations, the company airtight it. The company spent some other $26 million to demolish the edifice, taking a $125 meg write-off.
In 2000, Mr. Trump fired the chief executive and installed himself in the role, promising he would turn things around. The share toll was by then hovering virtually $3.
"Stock price is always a concern," Mr. Trump told The Associated Press at the time. "I was focused very much on my Manhattan real estate over the last number of years. Now, I'm going to be focused much more in Atlantic City."
'We have a company that's really got great potential' — 2005
Though he has acknowledged mistakes in piling crippling debt on Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, Donald Trump has steadfastly maintained that his resorts were the best-run and highest-performing casinos in Atlantic Metropolis.
"The casinos accept done very well from a business concern standpoint," he told Playboy magazine in 2004. "People hold that they're well run, they look expert and customers beloved them."
Prototype
In reality, the revenue at Mr. Trump's casinos had consistently lagged behind their competitors' for a decade before larger forces ravaged the industry. Get-go in 1997, his share of the Atlantic Urban center gambling market began to sideslip from its peak of 30 per centum.
Revenues at other Atlantic Metropolis casinos rose 18 percent from 1997 through 2002; Mr. Trump's fell past one percent.
Contest grew more intense in 2003, when the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa opened. The $1.1 billion, 40-story resort redefined the concept of an Atlantic City luxury casino. Revenues at Trump casinos dropped some other 6 percentage in a petty more than a year.
Had Mr. Trump's revenues grown at the rate of other Atlantic Metropolis casinos, his company could take made its involvement payments and possibly registered a turn a profit. But with sagging revenues and high costs, his casinos had too little coin for renovations and improvements, which are vital for hotels to attract guests. The public visitor never logged a profitable year.
"There'southward something not correct when every single ane of your projects doesn't work out," said Mr. Roffman, the casino analyst.
In a contempo interview, Mr. Trump attributed his declining market share in those years to the fact that his iii casinos were competing with i some other, a tacit acquittance that he overbuilt.
"That was the bad news," he said. "The proficient news is that I saved a lot of money in terms of dealing with costs."
The year the Borgata opened, Mr. Trump was already asking his bondholders to accept less money, in grooming for a third casino bankruptcy. Yet, at the same time, he managed to pull more than coin out of the company for himself, The Times found.
Since taking Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts public, Mr. Trump had been bound past a "contribution agreement" that required him to engage in the gambling businesses simply through his ain company and banned him from personally owning more 5 pct of the stock in whatever other casino company. So when he bought x percent of the shares in Riviera Hotel and Casino, a company based in Las Vegas, Mr. Trump was required to grant an choice to purchase the shares to his public corporation.
However, when Mr. Trump sold the Riviera shares in April 2004, the visitor, which was entitled to the proceeds, simply canceled the choice, without explanation.
The company's clarification of the sale did not disclose Mr. Trump'due south profit or how he had sold the shares. Just in its securities filings, Riviera reported that Mr. Trump had sold the shares in a privately negotiated auction for $x a share, well above the going price. That would have generated a gain of more than $1 1000000.
Asked to review the transaction by The Times, James D. Cox, a professor at Duke University Law School who specializes in corporate and securities law, said such "material omissions of fact" in the filings by the Trump company could have resulted in criminal charges "if it is knowing and willful," though such charges are rare.
"I think the biggest affair is, it understates his compensation," Mr. Cox said.
At the time, the visitor was besides asking its lenders for a pause, and headed toward another bankruptcy.
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"Basically, that sounds similar a fraudulent conveyance," said David Skeel, a bankruptcy police professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law Schoolhouse.
"The company is throwing away money," Professor Skeel said. "It's the equivalent of giving large bonuses to your executives right before you file for defalcation."
Just lawyers involved in the bankruptcy case said the transaction had apparently gone unnoticed.
In a recent interview, Mr. Trump said that he did not recall the transaction or why the board had canceled its choice.
Months later, in November 2004, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, the third such trip for Trump casinos.
This fourth dimension bondholders took a $500 million loss. Mr. Trump, who stepped down every bit chief executive simply remained chairman of the board, agreed to invest $55 million of his own money in the company, mayhap his outset greenbacks investment. He still received $2 million a year under a "services agreement," which included the use of his name.
Shares sometimes traded below a dollar, but Mr. Trump said the problems had been stock-still.
"For the first fourth dimension ever, this will be a deleveraged visitor," Mr. Trump told The Las Vegas Sun in 2005.
Not everyone agreed. Mr. Trump's longtime investment bankers at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette had backed out of a deal with Mr. Trump to invest in the company soon before the bankruptcy was filed. Suing for $26 million in fees, the bankers said in court papers that the casinos would exist back in defalcation court within five years because Mr. Trump's revenue projections were as well rosy and the company was still carrying too much debt.
"The Trump name does not connote high-quality amenities and first-class service in the casino industry," lawyers for the investment depository financial institution said. "Rather," the Trump name is associated with "the failure to pay one's debts, a company that has lost money every year, and backdrop in need of meaning deferred maintenance and lagging behind their competitors." (The dispute was later settled.)
'They will run across how smashing it will become' — 2009
When Donald Trump has been pressed on his casinos' performance during his presidential campaign, he has repeatedly said he left Atlantic City at the correct fourth dimension.
"Atlantic City is a disaster, and I did great in Atlantic Urban center," he said during a Republican Party fence concluding September, co-ordinate to a transcript. "I knew when to exit. My timing was bang-up. And I got a lot of credit for information technology."
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That would suggest Mr. Trump willingly left sometime around 2006, the year that revenues peaked in Atlantic Urban center and that Pennsylvania allowed its commencement casino to open, a development that marked the beginning of a rapid downward screw in the city. The drop-off was exacerbated by the recession that began in 2008.
Just in early 2009, equally Trump casinos lurched toward bankruptcy for the fourth time, Mr. Trump was even so trying to hang on. At loggerheads with board members who had been selected by bondholders after the 2004 bankruptcy, he offered to buy all or a part of the casino company begetting his proper noun. He was rebuffed, and he quit the board presently after.
Testifying in bankruptcy court in Camden, North.J., Mr. Trump argued that the company could not use his proper noun, since shortly earlier filing the defalcation it had stopped paying him the $166,000 a calendar month he received under the services agreement. He testified that his brand was worth $3 billion. He likewise testified that he was personally negotiating the settlement of a lawsuit in Florida that would yield more than $100 1000000 for the visitor.
And contradicting what he had said later on the prior defalcation, he testified that the visitor's debt load was still too loftier.
"This time, the debt is being cut by a lot, and the company is really poised," he said.
There were odd moments on the stand. Mr. Trump, for case, vastly understated his role, proverb he "became very much less involved with the company" during years when he was actually chairman of the board and chief executive, and "was on the lath in a very minority position" during years when he had been chairman.
As in previous cases, others warned that Mr. Trump's promises should non exist trusted. This time it was Carl C. Icahn, the activist investor who had a major stake in the visitor. (The ii men now draw themselves as friends and Mr. Icahn supports Mr. Trump'southward candidacy.)
Mr. Icahn's team argued that the remaining debt was still unsupportable, that the Trump name was replaceable, and that a windfall from the Florida lawsuit was wishful thinking. Under Mr. Trump, the company had a long history of making rosy revenue projections and never meeting them, Mr. Icahn's lawyer argued.
Epitome
Just a estimate approved the Trump plan and noted that Mr. Trump and his supporters had established "that the Trump brand is worth millions of dollars" to the casinos.
This time, bondholders gave up about $1.3 billion in substitution for control of the company. For the first fourth dimension, Mr. Trump had no official function at the visitor he had founded, and he endemic no more than 10 pct.
In a recent interview, Mr. Trump best-selling that he left Atlantic Urban center when he did because he failed in his effort to purchase back the casinos. But he said the timing worked out well for him, in the stop.
"In 2009 they were worth a hell of a lot more than they are now," he said. "Sometimes you're better off lucky than good."
Trump Marina was soon sold for $38 1000000, less than 10 percent of what the company paid Mr. Trump for it in 1996. The Plaza was shuttered. The Florida lawsuit that Mr. Trump had valued at more than than $100 million produced aught for the company. Mr. Trump and his daughter Ivanka sued the company, saying their brand was being tarnished by the ramshackle appearance of the Taj Mahal.
Mr. Trump continued to earn money from the casinos. In 2011, the casinos reported leasing a Trump helicopter for $390,000 and spending $236,000 for "Trump labeled trade," including $197,000 for Trump Ice bottled water.
In retrospect, David Hanlon, a veteran casino executive who ran Merv Griffin's Atlantic City operations at the fourth dimension of the Resorts battle, said, Mr. Trump succeeded in repeatedly convincing investors, bankers and Wall Street that "his proper name had real value."
"They were so in love with him that they came dorsum a second, tertiary and 4th time," Mr. Hanlon said. "They allow him strip out assets. Information technology was awful to watch. It was astonishing. I have to give Trump credit for using his glory time and time again."
In 2014, the casino visitor filed for bankruptcy protection for the fifth time. The main executive cited the debt level later on the 2009 bankruptcy as the primary reason.
For a time, Mr. Trump lent a glamorous sheen to the faded resort metropolis. Simply some of his one-time investors no longer run into the value.
"People underestimated Donald Trump's ability to pillage the company," said Sebastian Pignatello, a private investor who at one time held stock in the Trump casinos worth more than $500,000. "He drove these companies into bankruptcy by his mismanagement, the debt and his pillaging."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atlantic-city.html
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