Report: Toronto firm wins Revel auction

Brookfield Asset Management, a Toronto real estate investment firm, won the bankruptcy auction for Atlantic City's Revel Casino Hotel with a $110 million bid, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Revel officials could not be reached for confirmation.

Brookfield, which owns Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas, was competing against Glenn Straub, a Florida investor who set the baseline for Tuesday's auction with a $90 million offer.

The reported price is a little more than 4 percent of the $2.4 billion it cost to build the Revel.

Straub's attorney, Stuart J. Moskovitz, has said that Straub would mount a legal challenge if he lost the auction because of irregularities in the way it was conducted. Moskowitz could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

For example, John K. Cunningham, Revel's lead bankruptcy attorney, did not reveal until Tuesday in a filing designed to disclose potential conflicts of interest that Brookfield, a client of his firm in unrelated matters, was involved in the auction.

That raised the question of whether Brookfield met the bid deadline of 4 p.m. Sept. 23.

It's possible that Cunningham and his investment banker colleagues received a timely bid from Brookfield that was deficient or not acceptable to the sellers. The bid procedures approved by the bankruptcy court allowed them to work with Brookfield to improve the bid to the point where Brookfield could participate in the auction.

Cunningham said last week that he was following the approved bid procedures, which also allow him to "modify the bid procedures in any way that will best promote the goals of the sale."

All of that means that Straub, a disgruntled bidder, will have a hard time successfully protesting the sale to Brookfield.

Revel is expected on Wednesday to file a bankruptcy court notice of the auction's result. The filing should include a copy of the Brookfield asset purchase agreement, which would likely show whether Brookfield intends to file for a gaming license.

Source: Philly.com