Skadden, Milbank, Latham Win on Eldorado’s $8.5B Caesars Deal

A trio of Big Law firms won work representing Eldorado Resorts Inc. and Caesars Entertainment Corp. in the $8.58 billion Eldorado purchase of Caesars to create the largest U.S. gaming operator.

Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom advised Caesars, which had been pressured to consider a sale by activist investor Carl Icahn.

Milbank and Latham & Watkins worked for Eldorado, which has been catapulted into a major gaming company by the deal.

Los Angeles-based corporate M&A partner Deborah Conrad led Milbank’s representation in Eldorado’s latest deal. The firm has helped the gaming upstart-turned-giant gobble up competitors in recent years.

Other Milbank partners working on the deal included New York-based executive compensation partner Mike Shah and New York-based tax partners Russell Kestenbaum and Max Goodman.

Milbank has advised Eldorado on at least five other transactions since 2016, involving its $1.85 billion acquisition of Tropicana Entertainment Inc. in April last year.

Latham’s deal team representing Eldorado was led by San Diego-based Sony Ben-Moshe, who co-chairs the firm’s gaming and hospitality practice.

The Skadden team was led by a 12-partner group pulled from practices including M&A, banking, capital markets, antitrust, tax, labor and employment, executive compensation, intellectual property, litigation and real estate.

In Los Angeles, those partners included Andrew Garelick, K. Kristine Dunn, Brian McCarthy, Michelle Gasaway, Kenneth Betts, Joseph Yaffe, Karen Corman, Meryl Chae. A New York-based group including Richard Grossman, Kenneth Schwartz and Bruce Goldner was also involved, as well as Edward Micheletti from Wilmington.