Tuesday, March 23, 2004 | 10:59 a.m.
Deal on track, executive payouts disclosed
Horseshoe Gaming Holding Corp., Jack Binion's three-riverboat casino operation, reported Friday in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the company expects its $1.45 billion sale to Harrah's Entertainment Inc. to close by the end of June.
The SEC filing also disclosed that Horseshoe's top 11 executives below Binion are each guaranteed 2.99 times their most recent annual salary and bonus if the company is sold, as expected.
Binion's right-hand man, Roger Wagner, Horseshoe's president and chief operating officer, earned $600,000 in salary and a $347,700 bonus in 2003, positioning him for about $2.9 million after Harrah's buys the company.
Peri Howard, Horseshoe's vice-chair and the daughter of Binion's wife, stands to collect about $1.8 million for her $375,000 salary and $217,300 bonus, while Kirk Saylor, chief financial officer, is in line to garner $1.7 million based on his 2003 salary of $350,000 and bonus of $262,500.
Binion won't collect any bonuses under the change of control provisions. He collected a $1 million salary with no bonuses in each of the past three years.
Binion will, of course, reap the lion's share of the approximately $917.3 million Harrah's will pay for the company's assets and cash. He and his family control almost all of Horseshoe's 23,338 shares.
Harrah's purchase also includes the redemption of about $534 million in Horseshoe Gaming Holdings long-term debt.
Ted, AirTran plan LV service
United Airlines will replace its mainline flights between Chicago and Las Vegas with its Ted low-cost carrier subsidiary beginning in June, the company announced today.
United said that it would phase in eight daily Ted round-trip flights on Airbus A-320 jets between O'Hare International Airport and Las Vegas starting June 3 and continuing through the month. When the transition of mainline United to Ted is complete on that route, all of United's 39 flights through Las Vegas will be Ted operations -- the only all-Ted station in the United system.
There will be a net gain of 96 seats a day coming in on the Chicago market because the existing mainline United flights don't operate every day.
Meanwhile, Atlanta-based AirTran Airways announced today that it would add new nonstop flights between Las Vegas and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Beginning June 17, AirTran will operate new round trips Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays in addition to the two daily round trips the airline already has.
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