Background

Steve Wynn was born on January 27, 1942, in New Haven, Connecticut, the United States, to Michael and Zelma Wynn. His father Michael ran a string of bingo parlors while his mother Zelma was a dedicated homemaker who took care of Steve and his younger brother Kenneth. His father changed the family’s last name from "Weinberg" to "Wynn" to avoid anti-Semitism when Steve was six months old.

In spite of being an enterprising and successful businessman, Michael developed an addiction to gambling and lost much of his wealth. Nonetheless, he was determined to give his sons a good life and encouraged Steve to study well so that he could pursue a more stable profession instead of getting into the bingo business.

Education

Steve Wynn went to the Manlius School, a private boys' school east of Syracuse, New York. He worked hard to get straight As, managing to graduate at the top of his class in 1959. From there, he would attend the University of Pennsylvania, where he would receive his Bachelor of Arts in English literature.

He was contemplating going to law school. Before any plans were set in stone, he was devasted by the news that his father had passed away while in the middle of his open-heart surgery. Wynn relinquished a position at Yale Law School to take charge of his family's business.

Career

The Wynn family was plunged into financial crisis after the death of his father who left behind gambling debts that totaled $350,000. Since Kenneth was just ten years old at that time, the burden of providing for his family fell upon Steve’s shoulders. He managed to turn that business around, paying off all the debts, and making the halls profitable once again. It took him several years to accomplish this, and once it was done, he was more than ready to embrace some new business ventures of his own.

He made enough in the bingo business to buy a stake in the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. In 1970, Wynn bought ten acres off of the Las Vegas Strip for $154,000 and then persuaded E. Parry Thomas to lend him $400,000 to build a liquor warehouse there. After a year, he sold the warehouse to Schenley for $700,000 and he also sold Best Brands, netting $170,000 in the deal. Thomas gave Wynn a loan of $1.2 million, guaranteed by liquor executive Abraham Rosenberg.

With the consent of Caesars Palace owner Clifford Perlman, Wynn bought a narrow, one-acre slice of the Strip, next to Caesars Palace at Flamingo Road, from Hughes Tool Company in 1971. He announced that he would build a casino there to compete with Caesars, but it was really a way to get Caesars to buy him out. In 1972, Wynn and Rosenberg got the deal they wanted - they sold the land to Caesars for $2.25 million.

A few years later, with cash and property to leverage, Wynn decided to enter the gambling business in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where voters approved casino gambling in 1976. In 1980, he debuted his Golden Nugget Atlantic City casino with 522 hotel rooms. While planning a new 18-story hotel tower for his Las Vegas casino, Wynn signed Frank Sinatra to perform at both the Las Vegas and Atlantic City Golden Nuggets. The deal would bring wealthy high rollers, and their gambling revenues, to both casinos.

After acquiring interests in several other casinos, Wynn built The Mirage on the Strip, featuring some of the most luxe accommodations and eye-opening entertainment in town. His second high-end casino, The Bellagio, included an artificial lake and a gallery that housed museum-quality artworks. The Bellagio is credited with leading the resurgence of Las Vegas as a luxury destination for wealthy travelers in the 1990s. Estimated to have cost around $1.6 billion, the resort is undoubtedly one of the world’s most spectacular hotels. Opened in 1998, the Bellagio was the most expensive hotel in the world at the time it was built.

After selling Mirage Resorts to MGM Grand Inc. in 2000, Wynn opened his most expensive project to date, the Wynn Las Vegas, in 2005. The resort covers 215 acres and includes a casino, a convention center, and several thousand square feet of retail space. It has 45 floors, with 2,716 rooms. A year later, he opened Wynn Macau in the largest gaming jurisdiction in Asia. He went on to add the Encore Las Vegas and Encore Macau to his collection of resorts.

Wynn’s casinos are not limited to Las Vegas. He built a second Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi, and both the Wynn Macau and Encore Macau in Macau, China. His Wynn Macau opened in 2006, followed by the Wynn Encore Macau in 2010. And the Wynn Cotai Resort is slated to open in 2015.

He resigned as Wynn Resorts' chairman and CEO in February 2018 after dozens of women accused him of sexual misconduct; Wynn denies the allegations. On February 6, 2018, the casino mogul announced he was also resigning as chairman and chief executive of Wynn Resorts, blaming "an avalanche of negative publicity" for creating a situation "in which a rush to judgment takes precedence over everything else, including the facts."

In a statement, the company's board said it had "reluctantly" accepted its founder's resignation. After retiring from the hotel and hospitality industry in 2018, Wynn switched his focus from performing arts to fine arts. He founded Wynn Fine Art, which boasts a collection of museum-quality artwork that can be viewed or purchased at his galleries located in California and Florida.

Achievements

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  Steve Wynn is most notable for his contributions to the hotel and gaming industry in Las Vegas. Throughout his five-decade career, he has placed performance at the center of his hotels. The Mirage and the Bellagio featured the great acrobatic feats of Cirque du Soleil. Wynn Las Vegas and Encore Las Vegas houses the Encore theater, which showcases theatrical and musical shows. and is home to Le Reve, an acrobatic production set inside an aquatic theater-in-the-round.
  
  The Association of Travel Marketing Executives awarded Steve Wynn the ATLAS Lifetime Achievement Award for his innovation in building resorts in Las Vegas in 2005. He received the Manfred Steinfeld Humanitarian Award at the 22nd Annual Platinum Circle Awards in 2009.

Religion

Steve Wynn states that he is a Buddhist and that the Dalai Lama is his teacher.

Politics

Shortly after President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, Wynn became the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. The two men had known each other for years, though they weren't always on the best of terms; prior to coming around to the Republican nominee, Wynn had supported one of his rivals, Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

Wynn's tenure with the Republican National Committee lasted just shy of a year; one day after the Wall Street Journal reported on his alleged sexual misconduct involving casino employees, he announced he was stepping down on January 27, 2018.

Views

Steve Wynn made an anonymous donation of $2 million to the United Way of Southern Nevada in 2012, a fact which he later admitted to. Starting in 2013, Steve Wynn started donating $5 million per year to the University of Iowa’s Institute of Vision Research. This facility is very important to him because he suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, which is a degenerative eye disease that leads to tunnel vision and eventual blindness.

Wynn also regularly donates money to the Communities in Schools foundation, which works with approximately 2,300 schools across the United States. Their goal is to provide schools with the resources they need to help students who are under the poverty level. They give out clean clothes and warm meals often and will even provide emotional support and counseling to the students when needed. Wynn has a soft spot for at-risk children, which is why he chose to faithfully support this organization.

Quotations: "This generation... they have a different attitude. Instead of sitting and watching something, they want to be a part of it - they're very hedonistic and sensual."

"No one has any idea what's next... the uncertainty of the business climate in America is frightening, frightening to everybody, and it's delaying the recovery."

"Keep it simple. Tell the truth. People can smell the truth."

"Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history. For some reason, that simple truth has evaded everybody."

"Money doesn't make people happy. People make people happy."

"Change is not threatening."

Membership

Steve Wynn was a member of the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity.

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  Sigma Alpha Mu

Personality

Steve Wynn is an avid art collector. He has amassed a mega art collection, much of which is on display at the Bellagio. The "Fiori di Cuomo," a massive glass sculpture on the hotel lobby's ceiling, is rumored to have cost $40 million. He reportedly paid a record $35.8 million for a painting by J.M.W. Turner and $47.5 million for a painting of a peasant by Vincent Van Gogh.

Wynn has also become an avid collector of Chinese art. In addition to the record-setting group of vases he just bought, he has spent millions of dollars on objects for his Macau resorts.

Wynn once accidentally put his elbow through Picasso's masterpiece "Le Reve" just before he was to sell it to hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen for $139 million.

Interests

• Politicians

  Marco Rubio

• Artists

  Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer

Connections

Steve Wynn married Elaine Pascal in 1963. The couple divorced in 1986 only to remarry in 1991. They divorced again in 2010. They have two daughters, Kevyn and Gillian. He married Andrea Danenza Hissom in a ceremony at the Wynn Las Vegas in 2011. Andrea has two sons, Alex and Nick Hissom.

Father:

Michael Wynn

Mother:

Zelma Wynn

Spouse:

Andrea Danenza Hissom

Andrea Hissom came to media attention during Steve Wynn's much-publicized second divorce from his first wife Elaine Wynn, which was one of the largest divorce settlements in history that netted his former wife $741 million in stock in Wynn Resorts. During this time, it was reported that Andrea was the reason behind his split from Elaine as the two had been spotted "gallivanting around town."

She first met the billionaire, who is 21 years older than her, in the French Riviera in 2008. At the time, he was still married to his first wife Elaine, even though the two were separated. They started dating soon after, but the news of their relationship was made public in April 2009, when they were spotted together for the first time, enjoying a romantic dinner at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles.

They reportedly split within a few months but reconciled in June 2010, when they appeared publicly at the Sinatra Family Estates during a romantic wine dinner at Encore Beach Club.

Brother:

Kenneth Wynn

former spouse:

Elaine Wynn

After marrying Steve during her third year of college, Wynn worked Sundays at his father's Maryland bingo hall before the couple moved to Las Vegas.

Dubbed the "Queen of Las Vegas," Elaine Wynn became the largest shareholder of publicly traded Wynn Resorts in March 2018, after Steve's resignation.

Daughter:

Kevyn Wynn

On the night of July 26, 1993, the kidnappers abducted Kevyn Wynn, then 26, at gunpoint from her Spanish Trail condominium. She was bound, her eyes were taped shut, and she was forced to pose for photos in her underwear.

Steve Wynn paid the $1.45 million ransom with cash from the casino cage at The Mirage.

Daughter:

Gillian Wynn

Step-son:

Nick Hissom

Nick is a popular British recording artist and model.

Step-son:

Alex Hissom

Friend:

Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood served as Wynn's best man during Seve's wedding to Andrea Hissom.

Friend:

Frank Sinatra

Friend:

Donald Trump

References

• Winner Takes All: How Casino Mogul Steve Wynn Won-and Lost-the High Stakes Gamble to Own Las Vegas
  2018