Word: mgm
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...Murren waited five years to welcome the world to CityCenter, the 18 million-sq.-ft., $8.5 billion resort complex that opened this week in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip. When he took over as CEO of MGM Mirage a year ago, he was a youthful 47. "I'm now an old 48," he says, and he's got the gray hairs to prove it. That's because CityCenter came within a whisker of not opening at all, even as it was billed the most expensive private construction project in American history and thought of among locals...
Early this year, the company was in the grip of what Murren calls an "intense, very dire liquidity crisis." MGM Mirage's joint partner on CityCenter, the Dubai World subsidiary Infinity World, had sued MGM Mirage and stopped putting money into the project. Unable to find other sources of capital, the casino company was left with two choices: walk away from CityCenter or try to work out a deal with MGM Mirage's bankers. (See the 10 worst business deals...
...fell to Murren to convince the bankers that the project was worth saving - but things had gotten so touchy that he had to ask Nevada's congressional delegation, led by Senate majority leader Harry Reid, to call the CEOs of MGM's banking partners to ask them to return Murren's calls...
Even that almost wasn't enough. The company owed a $200 million payment to CityCenter's contractor, Perini Construction. It was due on a Friday in March. Murren spent that day on a conference call with the company's banks, trying to persuade them to lend MGM the funds until it could resolve its problems with Dubai. Murren could promise them nothing. "We don't know the outcome of CityCenter. We don't know how we're going to get there...
...MGM Mirage had already prepared its bankruptcy papers for the project and rented construction fencing to seal off the complex. As Murren waited for the decision in his office, TV crews circled overheard in helicopters, catching footage of a project widely rumored to be failing...