Kirk Kerkorian, the 89-year-old US billionaire, is reportedly looking to buy two Las Vegas casinos, MGM Mirage's Bellagio, and its partly built CityCenter, the most expensive privately financed project in American history, for a total of more than US$12bn.
Some analysts are speculating that it might be the opening move in a bid to take MGM private. Kerkorian is already the majority stakeholder in MGM with 56 per cent, which is currently spending $7bn on the CityCenter, which will have 2,700 condo units, a 4,000-room hotel, a convention centre and half a million square feet of retail space. It is scheduled to open in November 2009.
Real estate prices in Las Vegas have soared in the last several years, leaving some to conclude that casino stocks with large Las Vegas holdings are undervalued.
At MGM, the general sentiment is that Wall Street has failed to appreciate the potential value of the CityCenter project, which even the rival casino owner Stephen A. Wynn said was "as ambitious a project as this town has ever seen."
