“And so I feel some sense of civic duty, as a Chicagoan, taxpayer, and reasonably financially sophisticated person, to say the following publicly: What the hell, Chicago.”
Bally’s needs 25% ownership by women and minorities, so it is selling $250 million of casino stock to Chicagoans. It offers 100-to-1 leverage at 11% compounding quarterly. The roadshow ran through Black churches. Sophisticated investors would not pay this valuation, and nobody is asking them to.