Steve Wynn

Childhood

Steve Wynn was born on January 27, 1942, in New Haven, Connecticut. His real name was Steven Alan Weinberg, but his family changed his last name to Wynn in 1946.

Steve attended Manilus School in New York City, an exclusive private school for boys, graduating in 1959. He then studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania. After his father died in 1963, Wynn left his studies to run the family business.

Career

Steve's father owned several bingo parlors in Maryland. After his death, Wynn demonstrated excellent entrepreneurial skills and amassed enough capital to purchase a small stake in the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where he and his wife Elaine settled in 1967.

While owning a small stake in Frontier, he also ran a liquor distribution company. The profits from that company were used for a deal that helped him get into the gaming industry.

Wynn's biggest success in his early entrepreneurial years was the purchase of the property at the corner of Flamingo Road and the Las Vegas Strip near Caesars Casino, which he bought from Howard Hughes in 1971. The deal was finalized with the help of Parry Thomas, and Wynn immediately said he would build a small casino on the property. Caesars didn't want to risk getting a mini-casino next door, and paid Steve $2.25 million for the site.

In the early 1970s, Steve Wynn became interested in the run-down Golden Nugget casino in Las Vegas. He helped the dilapidated building find new life and was hugely successful in doing so. The casino's previous management was fired, and Wynn quadrupled revenue in his first year at the helm alone. He expanded the hotel and added amenities,  making the Golden Nugget one of the most luxurious casino resorts in Las Vegas.

Atlantic City was the next stop for Wynn, where he built the Golden Nugget Atlantic City in 1980. At the time of its opening, it was the second-largest casino in the city, and by 1983 it had become Atlantic City's most profitable casino. Despite this, in 1987, Wynn sold the Golden Nugget Atlantic City for $440 million in order to build The Mirage casino in Las Vegas.
November 22, 1989, Steve Wynn ushered in the mega-casino era by building The Mirage on the Las Vegas Strip. It cost Wynn $630 million dollars and was considered a risky investment. The casino resort was impressive with an indoor forest and a volcano across the street that became a tourist magnet. "The Mirage" was also the first casino to use surveillance cameras in all table games.

Bellagio, the second high-end casino built by Wynn's MGM Grand Inc. in 1998, set new standards for luxury. It featured an artificial lake and a gallery that housed museum-quality artwork. "The Bellagio revived Las Vegas as a luxury vacation destination for wealthy travelers. At the time, it was the most expensive construction project in Las Vegas history, costing $1.6 billion.

After selling Mirage Resorts in 2000, Wynn bought the outdated Dessert Inn, which he blew up, and on its site began construction of the most expensive hotel of all time for $2.7 billion, which would become the new benchmark for Las Vegas. At this time in 2002, Wynn founded Wynn Resorts LLC, headquartered in Las Vegas, which completed the construction. After nearly 5 years of construction, the Wynn Las Vegas Casino Resort opened in April 2005. It impressed with 2,716 top-quality rooms and an 18-hole golf course on the property.

Wynn Resorts later built several more casino resorts, including Wynn Macau, Encore Las Vegas, Encore at Wynn Macau - an expansion of Wynn Macau, Wynn Palace at Cotai Strip and Encore Boston Harbour. 

February 6, 1918 Steve Wynn stepped down as chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts. This followed a Wall Street Journal article that accused Wynn of sexual harassment over several decades. Steve Wynn denied all allegations: 

"The idea that I ever assaulted any woman is absurd. We are in a world where people can make accusations regardless of the truth, and a person is given the choice of enduring offensive publicity or engaging in years of litigation. It is unfortunate to be in this situation. The occasion for these allegations is the ongoing work of my ex-wife Elaine Wynn, with whom I am involved in a horrible and unpleasant legal battle in which she is seeking a revised divorce settlement."

Personal life

Steve Wynn first married Elaine Farrell Pascal in 1963. His wife was instrumental in building Wynn's gaming empire. They have two adult daughters, Kevin and Jillian. Steve divorced Elaine in 1986, but they remained close and remarried five years later. In 2010, there was a final breakup and the couple divorced again.

The divorce was amicable, and Steve paid Elaine $741 million for Wynn Resorts stock. But soon after the divorce, a bitter battle erupted. The couple became embroiled in a legal battle over an agreement in which Elaine allowed Steve to control her shares in Wynn Resorts Ltd.

In 2016, Steve and Elaine seemed to have finally ended their battle over their $4 billion stake in Wynn Resorts. However, in 2018, there was a sex scandal that forced Steve to step down as Chairman of the company's board of directors. Steve Wynn accused Elaine of orchestrating the scandal as a legal strategy to change the share agreement in a legal battle related to the couple's divorce in 2010. His company, Wynn Resorts, has also spoken out about his ex-wife's attempts to smear Steve's reputation.

In 2011, Steve Wynn married Andrea Danenza Hissom, who is 21 years younger than him. it came just one day after Kate Middleton married Prince William. Because of this, their wedding was dubbed the "American royal wedding," and Hissom even wore a dress that was compared to Middleton's.

Hissom was previously married to Robert David Hissom, a financial analyst. She and Robert are the parents of two boys, Alex and Nick Hissom, a well-known British singer and songwriter.

Revenue

As of 09.06.21, Steve Wynn is ranked 956th on the Forbes list, with an estimated fortune of $3.2 billion.

Interesting facts

• On July 26, 1993, the Winns' daughter Kevin, then 26 years old, was kidnapped. She was taken from her home at gunpoint and ransom was demanded. That same day, Steve Wynn paid a ransom of $1.45 million dollars. The Kidneppers kept their promise, and soon Steve found his daughter safe in her own car at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. A week later, two kidnappers were apprehended after one of them attempted to put down a $70,000 down payment on the Ferrari.
• One day, Prince Harry paid a visit to Steve's house. The third in line to the British throne befriended the gambling magnate and accepted an offer to stay at the Encore Wynn Hotel in an eight-room suite for $7,000 a night. There he was once photographed playing strip billiards. According to unconfirmed reports, the suite was snorted cocaine and a famous prostitute was among the guests. There are even rumors of a videotape of the events of that night.
• Steve Wynn has endured a number of investigations in the US on issues ranging from drug trafficking to money laundering, and has never been charged with any offense.
• When Wynn tried to open a casino in London to take advantage of the influx of wealthy Arabs in the early eighties, Scotland Yard denied him a license.
• This is a man who bought Impressionist masterpieces just to hang them on the walls of his casinos. Since the late 1990s, he has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on paintings by Picasso and Degas, Caravaggio and Titian.
• Steve once blew his finger off while playing with a gun given to him by a former mob hitman.
• At his wedding to Andrea Hiss, Clint Eastwood was his best man and lingerie model Caprice was his maid of honor. The reception, which was held at Wynn's Encore Ballroom, was attended by 500 guests, including Donald and Melania Trump, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Spielberg, Lionel Richie, Sir Philip Green and Celine Dion.
• The tycoon suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive genetic disease that gives him tunnel vision, destroying his ability to see peripheral images. He is completely blind in a dark room.
  

Legacy

No one can deny the indelible mark Steve Wynn has left on Las Vegas. In 2001, Time reporter Painton characterized Steve Wynn this way:

"In Las Vegas, there is Steve Wynn, the casino king, the son of an avid gambler and a patient with an eye disease that can make him blind; who in his 30s started cyclocross, windsurfing, rock climbing, motocross, water skiing and bodybuilding; who once called Donald Trump a "twinkle toe"; who let Frank Sinatra pinch his cheek in a commercial for his casino; who divorced his wife, Elaine Wynn, and remarried her five years later; and who two years ago shot off his index finger with a gun in his office."

Steve Wynn's name has become synonymous with modern Las Vegas, and that fact is unlikely to change in the near future. His legacy is his empire, all the casinos he built:

• Golden Nugget
• Golden Nugget Atlantic City
• The Mirage
• Treasure Island
• Bellagio
• Wynn Las Vegas.
• Wynn Macau.
• Encore Las Vegas.
• Encore Macau
• Wynn Palace.
• Encore Boston Harbour