Public Corporations are mainly owned by Retirement Funds, Mutual Funds and such. When the offer was made at $90 a share to buy out and take the company private, these funds took the money and ran. Timing was way off as the economy took an immediate tumble after the buyout.

I am in the camp that believes that Loveman did everything he could to keep the company intact. Maybe bankruptcy would have been better, who knows. Individually... The properties are profitable operations, it was the corporate debt that was (still is) the problem. During this time we made some drastic cuts - I took a 5% pay cut - it was given back, then taken away again. I have it back now. After 3 years I am finally getting a raise. I can say that our properties made the cuts early and stuck with them. And I am happy to say that I did not layoff anyone during this time in my departments - I cut back hours, believe me cutting back hours is a delicate act, it is much easier to lay off employees. We lost people through attrition, and we have not re-hired. Here is the interesting part about the cuts - we have the fewest employees we have ever had and the company has had the highest customer satisfaction scores during the last 2 years. Some people blame Loveman for this mess... He was just part of it, he could have left after Harrah's went private - TPG/Apollo wanted him to run it. I have attended quite a few company meetings with Gary Loveman in the last 10 years. - I believe he is a straight shooter. Just my opinion.