• Beyond the happy talk of the handshakes and press releases, what's the emergent giant's biggest challenge?
• Jobs one and two for Tom Reeg and company will be to find the promised $500 million in synergies and sell off marginal Caesars Entertainment properties asap.
• The best asset of the deal is the management culture of Eldorado replacing the belt and suspenders modus operandi of Caesars Entertainment.
• Looking for more? I update all of my investing ideas and strategies to members of The House Edge. Get started today »

“There is nothing wrong with change if it is in the right direction...”

- Winston Churchill

Uncle Carl has done it again. Despite a rather thinner premium than his usual take, Icahn, should he decide to exit, will walk with a $4.15 per share gain on his 99 million share stake in Caesars Entertainment (CZR). That comes to around a nifty $450 million. Not bad for five months' work. In the process, Icahn has reconstituted the CZR board, put a new CEO in place and now has a win-win choice. He can either leave a winner now, or hang in there until the deal starts churning out mammoth earnings gains and the merged stock ramps up to what we believe could bring his final haul into the billions.

The deal, according to company releases from both partners, bears the usual happy talk about combining great asset bases, finding miraculous synergies, and lots of self-congratulation.

Eldorado Resorts (ERI) will acquire all the shares of CZR. The way the deal is structured, holders will get $8.40 in cash and 0.899 shares of ERI common for each share of CZR. (Icahn’s average cost is estimated between $8.20 and $9 a share.) The share price will be determined by a 30-day weighted average price per share as of May 23rd. That brings the total value of the deal to $17.3 billion. As we have written on SA since Icahn first announced his buy-in, investors who bet on his casino deals usually make money.

And so they have.

Data by YCharts