Detroit MGM and Beau Rivage not for sale at this time
In April, MGM Mirage hired Wall Street investment house Morgan Stanley to evaluate sales offers the company had received for MGM Grand Detroit and the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Miss.
At the time the company was busy restructuring both its corporate finances and the $8.5 billion CityCenter development to keep both entities out of bankruptcy.
By spring, the company had resolved its immediate financial problems, and the MGM Grand Detroit and Beau Rivage are off the market.
Well, sort of.
Technically, they never really were on the market, MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said Thursday.
“It’s one of these cases where you are kind of splitting hairs,” Feldman said. “People had expressed interest and we hired a firm to explore the potential offers. But they never went anywhere. The parties were not interested in paying full value for the properties.”
MGM Grand Detroit Chief Executive Officer Lorenzo Creighton told The Detroit News Wednesday that while a number of interested buyers had been "kicking the tires" at the casino earlier this year, activity from interested parties has waned.
"While every casino in America is for sale for the right price, we haven’t had any buyers actively courting us for a while," Creighton said.
Feldman said the company, under normal circumstances, would have evaluated the offers internally.
Obviously, last spring was far from normal operating circumstances for MGM Mirage. The vast percentage of the company’s financial, legal and corporate resources were working on the restructuring matters.
Feldman said that if a party were to approach MGM Mirage about acquiring the MGM Grand Detroit or Beau Rivage “with a serious expression of interest” the company has a fiduciary obligation to its shareholders to explore a potential sale.
“There are not active discussions, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t respond if we were approached,” Feldman said.