Fertitta Entertainment is acquiring Caesars Entertainment for about $5.7 billion cash and the assumption of nearly $11.9 billion of debt, significantly adding to the company’s gambling and hospitality holdings both in brick-and-mortar and online.
Latham & Watkins advised Caesars Entertainment, which also used Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom as antitrust counsel. Freshfields advised the Carano family, which owns about 10 percent of Caesars. The Latham team was led by Los Angeles partners Steven Stokdyk and Andrew Clark.
Stuart Cobb from Houston was the only Texas lawyer among the 40 or so Latham attorneys who advised on the deal.
White & Case is the outside legal counsel to Fertitta Entertainment, and Steven Scheinthal is general counsel of the Houston-based company. He led the in-house team that included Dash Kohlhausen, Jeanette McKay and Sarah Peters.
Scheinthal has led Tilman Fertitta through more than 50 acquisitions in building the $10 billion empire that is Fertitta Entertainment. Citing his numerous achievements, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are honoring Scheinthal with the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department (six to 20 attorneys). ACC and The Lawbook are celebrating Scheinthal and 18 other Houston-area corporate in-house counsel at an awards ceremony tonight.
The White & Case team was led from New York by Joel Rubinstein, Mike Deyong and Ross Sturman. Supporting the deal were New York M&A associates Joshua Butler, Parmeet Batra and Livia Katroshi with Kai Glick in London.
Houston team members who helped on the deal included partner Taylor Pullins and associate Emily Pope.
The finance team for White & Case was also supported by New York by partners Justin Wagstaff, Gary Kashar and Brett Pallin, with help from Jonathan Rochwarger and Jonathan Michels and associates Elizabeth Mapelli and Eriq Yu.
“In particular, Mike Deyong, Ross Sturman and Justin Wagstaff were excellent,” Scheinthal told The Texas Lawbook. “You can’t hire any better lawyers than those three.”
The team included Sasha Belinkie, Scott Fryman, Arlene Arin Hahn and Tal Marnin. Counsel Kenneth Barr also advised from New York with associates Temi Ajibode, Jarrah Al-Buainain, Julia Garcez, Taylor Gillespie, Jacob Smith and Peter Shelburne.
White & Case’s George Paul, Paul Pittman, Gabriela Baca and Abdul Hafiz provided counsel from the nation’s capital with David Pezza, Amy Kurland and Chris Ohlgart in Chicago.
Skadden antitrust partner Kenneth Schwartz and associate Jessica Schneider advised Caesars from New York.
The Latham team included Sony Ben‑Moshe, Bryan Monson, Colleen Smith and Ellie Bach in San Diego.
From Los Angeles, Century City, Orange County or Silicon Valley: Kenneth Askin, Brent Epstein, Taylor Ashton, Shayna Servillas, Lauren Richardson, Austin Machado, Irena Huang, Ana O’Brien, Kathryn Harrington, Eric Song, Michelle Carpenter, Samuel Vallejo, Dylan Shamoon, Aron Potash, Brandon Kerns, Jennifer Howes, Sara Schlau, Sarah Zahedi, Ryleigh Chen, Ghaith Mahmood, Billy Kosmidis and Erica Shin.
Advising from Chicago: Sandhya Chandrasekhar, Tal Simon, Laura Waller, Gary Axelrod and Dominique Gonzales. Susana Santos and Lauren Stark in Boston, and Jenny Bobbitt and Robin Hellebrekers in New York also provided counsel with Stephen Nasko, Arash Lotfi and Sadie Kavalier in Washington, D.C.
Fertitta said it agreed to pay $31 cash for each share of Caesars stock held, which represents a premium of about 46 percent to the casino operator’s 30-day average price. Fertitta Entertainment also said a consortium of 10 banks arranged new debt financing as part of the transaction.
Caesars operates some of the most well-known resorts on the Las Vegas Strip: Caesars Palace, Harrah’s, Paris Las Vegas, Planet Hollywood, Horseshoe, The LINQ Hotel, Flamingo, and The Cromwell. Caesars also has an industry-leading loyalty program, according to Fertitta Entertainment, which owns the Golden Nugget, the Landry’s restaurant chain and the Houston Rockets. There are Golden Nugget resorts in Nevada, New Jersey, Mississippi, Louisiana and Colorado.
The companies said the merged entity will have 60 brick-and-mortar casino and gaming facilities with numerous online gaming platforms; and sports betting will be available at over 600 Fertitta Entertainment outlets and at more than 200 third-party locations under the brand of longtime British bookmaker William Hill.
Some of those Fertitta Entertainment outlets include Landry’s restaurants across 40 states, The Westin Houston Downtown, a handful of resorts and an aquarium on Galveston Island — as well as Pleasure Pier and Kemah Boardwalk — and aquariums in Houston, Denver and Nashville.
Caesars Entertainment used PJT Partners as exclusive financial advisor on the deal. Fertitta Entertainment tapped Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as financial advisors.
Mark Curriden contributed to this report.