The party’s over. So appropriately enough the default of the owner of the Tropicana casino in Las Vegas brought global defaults to 28 this year, affecting debt worth $18.4bn. That’s against 22 defaults in the whole of 2007, on debt worth $8.1bn.
All bar one of this year’s sick list are from the US - and the Tropicana has ample company in a heavy roll call of leisure and gaming companies.
S&P comments:
Mounting defaults in 2008 come as hardly surprising, overdue if anything…..The pace of U.S. defaults through the first five months of the year is the fastest since 2003.
The report gave Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph “a fright.” Every cloud…
Here’s the full list:

Related links
Bankrupticies and defaults gather pace - FT.com
Sorry 3 - legends gaming is a casino operator too. Interesting - particularly in relation to Gala Coral here in the UK
Interesting - a lot of debt in Tropicana. I thought traditional wisdom was that casinos and gambling were fairly recession resilient but there are at least 2 casino businesses on this list. Quite a few publishers too.