Nevada’s casino industry generates billions of dollars for the state and is subjected to strict regulations that required all casinos to publically declare their earnings to ensure that their books are open to inspection. Private casinos such as The Cosmopolitan and the SLS Las Vegas have been pushing hard for some of these regulations to be eased as they fall under the category of being privately owned.
The Blackstone Group owns the Cosmopolitan casino and the SLS Las Vegas is owned by Stockbridge Capital and along with other privately held casinos, these entities believe that they should not be subjected to disclosing their financial earnings in public. The Nevada Gaming Commission has reviewed these concerns and decided to approve new regulation that no longer makes it mandatory for privately owned businesses in the state to disclose their earnings in public.
Privately owned casinos are required by state law to register themselves with the Securities and Exchange Commission but are not subjected to detailed checks as these privately owned casinos have no public stock that the commission can closely monitor. The Nevada Gaming Commission discussed the issue in detail and ruled last week that it was an additional burden to both the casinos and state regulators to review these financial earnings as there is no trading of public stock being involved.
The commission was willing to drop the extra regulation for private businesses by stating that out of state businesses were not subjected to reporting their financial information in Nevada, which made it unfair to state owned private businesses. While the privately owned businesses in Nevada are extremely happy with the new regulation, the Nevada Culinary Union is not happy with the ruling.
The Culinary Union is the state’s biggest labor group that represents more than 57,000 casino workers in Las Vegas. The union has been fighting hard for a number of months to get state regulators to recognize Deutsche Bank’s role in a multi-million dollar interest rate financial crime. Deutsche Bank has a stake with the Station Casino, a company that the Culinary Union has opposed over the years in order to bring together a unionization of casino workers.
In a statement, a representative from the Culinary Union said the new ruling would “only exacerbate the ‘too-big-to-regulate’ problem in Nevada gaming by concealing more information from the public.”
Nevada gaming commission chairman Tony Alamo stated that the approval of the new regulation will not have much of an impact on the state’s regulatory monitoring of financial information as privately owned companies will still be required to provide detailed financial information to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which will keep the information confidential.