Book Review — The Caesars Palace Coup by Frumes and Indap
If you are looking for a book to give you an inside look into the debt markets, bankruptcy, fraud, improper corporate governance, and distressed debt this is the book for you. It’s also an excellent expose on negotiation tactics and strategy with various tranches of of lien holders in complex debt restructurings. The story of Caesars Palace has a cast of characters and institutions from investments banks to private equity all the way thru white-shoe law firms. This particular bankruptcy and restructuring was a spider web of potential conflicts of interest and self-dealing. It highlights the need for a dutiful board with altruistic interests and no self-dealing.
As were learning more each day about the fraud that is being reported at the cryptocurrency giant FTX, this book serves as a nice guidebook or glimpse at how the creditors will work to recover anything that is left at FTX. At some point it will become a negotiation. There will be a lot of talk and opinions about what caused the fraud and that won’t make money back for those that lost vast sums, but this book offers a similar perspective that Caesar’s faced during their tumultuous time. This is a book that can provide that great perspective to be applied for in many current events and future news stories.
