Caesars misses USD 225 M interest payment

The missed deadline did not come as a surprise. Analysts and those watching the company's financial situation had predicted the likelihood of Caesars.

Alex Bumazhny of Fitch Ratings said days before that it was likely that the company would miss the deadline since it's a payment to the operating division's junior creditors. The company's decision was predicated on how much time it wanted to buy to keep negotiating a deal with its first-in-line creditors to restructure finances ahead of a potentially messy bankruptcy filing, he explained.

Caesars had been talking with senior creditors for months in hopes of resolving its dire financial situation outside of potentially messy bankruptcy court proceedings. Some of those creditors had stopped negotiating and revealed the company's proposal to split its operations division into a real estate investment trust with one entity owning the casinos and hotels and another paying to lease and manage them.

Among the ideas, Caesars officials proposed turning its flagship casino-hotel Caesars Palace into its own real estate investment trust and essentially mortgaging the property for US$2.6 billion to raise cash to pay off lenders and bondholders.

Caesars had US$ 1.5 billion in cash and US$ 22.8 billion in debt as of September 30.