Sale of Atlantic City’s Tropicana Casino to billionaire Icahn expected to close Monday

Tropicana Casino sale expected to close Monday

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — It took more than two years, nearly $7.8 million in fees to lawyers and other consultants, and a billionaire’s bargain-basement bid to rescue Atlantic City’s Tropicana Casino and Resort.

But the sale to Carl Icahn is expected to close Monday afternoon.

The deal marks the activist investor’s return to the nation’s second-largest gambling market and ends one of the most tortured casino sales in U.S. history.

New Jersey casino regulators stripped the Tropicana’s former owners of their casino license in December 2007. They cited less than a year of poor performance, including layoffs that left the gambling hall dirty and understaffed.

Icahn bought the casino out of bankruptcy for $200 million. That was 80 percent less than what it was expected to fetch before the recession hit.