There’s a great piece on Sol Kerzner in the Wall Street Journal, appearing here via projo.com:
Most succession dramas involve the sudden death of a company patriarch, not the successor. The elder Kerzner now faces the prospect of coming back to fulfill his company’s growing global ambitions, just as it must deal with new private-equity investors who expect healthy returns. He returns to the helm after a lifetime in the fast lane, a jet-setting lifestyle that took its toll in the form of four marriages, a 1983 heart attack and an alcohol rehabilitation stint at the Betty Ford Clinic two years ago.
Kerzner says he was extremely close to Butch and they would often speak on the phone two or three times a day. “Before [Butch’s death], the Kerzners were going to continue running things and there was no time frame for the family not to be involved,” Kerzner says in his tidy corner office, deep inside the sprawling Atlantis resort complex here. “But I’m 71 and I won’t be doing this for another 30 or 40 years.”
Now Kerzner International is stuck with the same dilemma it faced a decade ago: succeeding the legendary founder. Instead of a young, 42-year-old CEO who had been carefully prepared for the job over many years, the company will be led by Kerzner and Paul O’Neil, 61, a board member and former top executive who was also lured out of retirement after Butch’s death.
Kerzner says he and O’Neil will continue to run the company “for the foreseeable future,” and he has not formulated a succession plan.
But pressure is building on the company. Many in the industry see the company’s failure to win the Singapore license as an immediate consequence of Butch Kerzner’s death. Long in his father’s shadow, Butch had shepherded the Singapore deal from the start and was seen as the key contact by officials in Singapore, who did little to explain their decision in its aftermath.
“I believe that if Butch were alive, they would have won Singapore,” says gambling titan Steve Wynn, a close friend of the elder Kerzner.
I really suggest your reading the entire piece–it’s a great brief bio of both Kerzners and a snapshot of where Sun International is today. Interesting that it doesn’t mention Sun’s brief investment in Atlantic City–they owned Resorts for a few years, planned a huge renovation expansion, but then sold it before doing much.
This is a great story, both because it’s well-written and informative, but also because it’s on a company that the US-based gaming press doesn’t cover much.