Kerkorian’s final interview: A storied dealmaker with no regrets

The MGM Resorts International Grand Hotel & Casino stands in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.

Kirk Kerkorian rarely gave interviews over the course of his remarkable 98 years, but in 2011 he agreed to sit for questions from two Bloomberg News reporters. It turned out to be the last interview he gave to a media organization.
We were ushered into his Tracinda Corp. office in a nondescript Beverly Hills building, where Kerkorian, then 93, greeted my former colleague, Brett Pulley, and me. Still active, Kerkorian’s gait was steady and smooth as he walked around his office, wearing a white leather jacket that matched his hair. He smiled easily and spoke softly.
For all his fearsome reputation as a deal-making titan across Detroit, Las Vegas and Hollywood, generating a net worth of USD3.6 billion, Kerkorian came off that day as gentle, media-shy and a little weary. He was most animated when the half-hour conversation touched on boxing, flying and his Lincy Foundation charity.
That week in April, Kerkorian had announced he was stepping down from the board of MGM Resorts – a decision he made because he’d had enough of long, tedious business meetings. “I just didn’t care to keep going back,” he said.
Kerkorian said his hearing had deteriorated, and two years before he had turned in his driver’s license and given up playing tennis, a longtime passion.
“I have some eye problems from when I was a pilot,” Kerkorian said. That didn’t stop him from working out daily on a treadmill and lifting weights each day. “I exercise a lot,” he said. “I try to stay healthy.”
His few office decorations included a model Boeing aircraft and a painting of boxer Jack Dempsey – a gift from Frank Sinatra, he said, as he briefly reminisced on his earliest days in Las Vegas when “there were just two hotels,” The Flamingo and the Last Frontier.
Each time he started to tell a tale – about Sinatra or Ted Turner or Bugsy Siegel – he’d stop himself, saying that we didn’t want to hear those old stories. We did.
The financial crisis, then three years old, dominated much of the conversation. Asked whether he was worried about the dismal times, he said, “I don’t usually worry. We’ve got good people.”
Pushed a bit, he said, “Sometimes we got a little concerned. But we’ve been through it before. Maybe not to that extent, but we’ve been through challenging times in some areas two or three times.”
The global debt crisis and U.S. recession walloped Las Vegas, nearly wiping out his casino company as it struggled to finish the $8.5 billion CityCenter resort and fought with its also-troubled partner, Dubai World. A near $1 billion side bet on Ford Motor Co., which was backed by his MGM Resorts stake, had to be unwound at a loss as both companies’ share prices collapsed.
“I made a mistake,” Kerkorian said simply of the Ford transactions.
Both MGM and Ford have since rebounded from crisis lows, and CityCenter is an enormous and vibrant presence on the Strip.
Always the dealmaker, he said there were other potential investments that still interested him though the search was complicated by the tough times.
“It’s hard looking for new opportunities right now,” Kerkorian said. “There might be some really young kids into high tech that would know more than I. I’m from the old school. I don’t know if I’m up with that enough.”
His best deal, Kerkorian said, was buying the land that today houses Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip for a mere $800,000.
With nearly three quarters of a century of deal-making behind him, surely there must have been some deals he really regretted; what was the worst one of them all?
“I can’t think of any right now,” Kerkorian said, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve been lucky.” Beth Jinks, Bloomberg