SOURCE: Bloomberg

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Focus Not Vegas

``The platform of their business has not been Vegas- centric,'' unlike casino companies like MGM Mirage and Wynn Resorts Ltd., said Matt Sodl, managing director of Innovation Capital LLC, a Los Angeles-based investment banking firm specializing in casinos.

The value of the global casino market, based on the amount won by companies, may reach $67.4 billion this year and will rise to about $89.3 billion by 2012, according to West Bromwich, England-based Global Betting & Gaming Consultants.

Private equity and management-led takeovers announced this year have reached a record $657 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg through Dec. 15. Leveraged buyout funds have raised a record $170 billion from January to the beginning of October, according to London-based Private Equity Intelligence Ltd.

Apollo Management

New York-based Apollo Management founding partner Leon Black was the former co-head of corporate finance at now-defunct Drexel Lambert Inc., the top underwriter of high-yield corporate debt before the firm collapsed in 1990. Black, 55, founded Apollo Management that year and has since made equity investments of more than $16 billion.

Texas Pacific created the world's second-biggest buyout fund this year, raising $15 billion.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based firm has raised more than $28 billion through six funds in the 14 years since it was founded by David Bonderman, James Coulter and Bill Price. It has invested in about 75 companies, including Burger King Corp. and Continental Airlines Inc.

Harrah's posted $236.7 million in net income on $7.1 billion in revenue in 2005.

The company had planned a multibillion-dollar redevelopment of its Las Vegas Strip properties to compete with new, high-end casinos from Wynn, Las Vegas Sands and MGM Mirage. On Oct. 2 the company said it was trading 24 acres on the Strip for Boyd Gaming Corp's Barbary Coast Hotel and Casino, giving Harrah's a stretch of six casinos along the Strip's east side and a total of 350 acres.

On Oct. 25, Chief Executive Officer Gary Loveman said an announcement was ``two to three months away.'' That project probably will be scaled back, said Robert LaFleur, a Stamford, Connecticut-based analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group.

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