Investors received the latest financial news from the world’s largest casino companies last week. And while Dan was thinking standard SEC filings from Caesars were signs of impending online poker happiness, it was the unexpected word from MGM and Wynn that really had tongues wagging.

MGM: Documents Shredded and Shares Dumped

Back in the day, gambling establishments made their problems disappear somewhere out in the Nevada desert. Perhaps that’s where we’ll find MGM’s legal documents?

MGM has been embroiled in a years-long legal battle with City Center’s general contractor Perini Building Company. The case took a bizarre turn last week when MGM notified the court that a rogue warehouse manager sold more than 500 boxes of legal documents to a paper recycler for roughly $800. 
  
Overall, it wasn’t a great news week for MGM. Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, continued to dump shares of the casino company he founded. He reportedly raked in $268 million for the 20 million shares he sold on February 27. 
 
Wynn: Stock Halted after Premature/Erroneous Filing

The messy divorce between Wynn Resorts and one-time (?) partner Kazou Okada continues to be the fodder of many news stories. But that isn’t what temporarily halted the shares of Wynn from trading on the stock exchange on March 2.

Wynn filed a document with the SEC about getting the concession to build a new casino in Macau, the world’s hottest gaming territory. Wynn’s share price soared on the news. But minutes later, the SEC filing was pulled and shares were halted. Apparently Wynn jumped the gun on the announcement, failing to jump through one last legal hoop. Poker and investment maven Kid Dynamite goes Sherlock Holmes on Wynn’s premature 8-K ejaculation.

Shares of Wynn Resorts tumbled on January 12 when it came out that a Wynn director and major shareholder had filed a lawsuit against the casino company. Turns out Kazuo Okada, one of Steve Wynn’s original partners, is claiming the company made a questionable $135 million donation to the University of Macau and hasn’t been sharing its financial information with him. Reuters has a nice write-up here.

The veiled implication is Wynn’s sizable donation might have been less than philanthropic – bordering on a ”pay to play” ante to retain favor in the world’s most lucrative gaming destination. (The competing Las Vegas Sands’ Macau operation is currently under DOJ and SEC scrutiny for possible infringement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as referenced here in a Wall Street Journal blog.)

Wynn claims Okada’s lawsuit is just a smoke screen to mask the fact that Okada had been working behind Wynn’s back to develop a casino in the Philippines. You can read all the tawdry details in A Partners’ Fight Erupts at Wynn.

How will it end? Perhaps better than Steve Wynn’s marriage. After all, Wynn recently told the press, “I love Kazuo Okada as much as any man that I’ve met in my life.”

Wynn shares have since recovered from the drama at the start of January, but still have a ways to go in 2012 before reaching 2011 highs.

CZR FTW?
“Poker Poker!”

It feels like we’ve been talking about Caesars going public since before they were Caesars (we have) … but their latest S1/A filing with the SEC suggests not only that CZR really is might be ready to kick it Zynga-style with a big fat IPO … but also that any public offering from the worldwide gambling empire may be in preparation for imminent legalization of US online poker.

While such hefty levels of high finance are still probably a little beyond my ken … you can read the nearly 300 pages of Big Casino corporate speak and decide for yourself. Somewhere in here, I’m pretty sure, is a blueprint for the future of poker and/or online gambling.

At a minimum, I found this snippet on page 7 suggesting that Caesars is getting ready for something big related to online gambling poker:

We believe that additional jurisdictions will legalize online gaming due to consumer demand, a broader understanding of the need to regulate the industry and to generate income through taxes on gaming revenue. As such, we support efforts to regulate the online gaming industry to ensure that consumers are protected. We believe that the potential for online gaming is substantial and believe that we will command, at a minimum, our fair share in any legal jurisdiction. An H2 Gaming Capital study conducted in 2010 projects that the global online gaming market will grow to $36 billion in revenues by 2012. We believe that the largest opportunity in online gaming in the near term is the legalization of online poker in the United States. [emphasis added]

There’s tons more in this document worthy of perusal … some of which I’ve already skimmed. And it doesn’t take much to see how an actual Caesars IPO — not just talk of it — could-well coincide with legalized American online poker hubbub (finally!) reaching critical mass.

Caesars, after all, formerly known as Harrah’s, was a publicly traded company until going private shortly after passage of the UIGEA in 2006. Changed their name to Caesars in November 2010 — the last time they prepped seriously for an IPO (right after their boy Harry Reid won re-election and owed them a favor) only to withdraw plans for a public offering of stock shares right after someone told them the lame-duck online poker Reid bill was just a farce for other political purposes a couple weeks later.