David Berman had just started his career as an investment banker in Los Angeles when he jumped on a new opportunity. In those days, Berman was saddled with a couple oil and gas deals, and a complex biotech deal – “frankly, I still don’t know what the company did” – when the chance came to work on two M&A transactions in the gaming industry in Las Vegas.
“Our senior gaming banker was based in New York, as were most gaming industry bankers, and I was in L.A. only a 45-minute Southwest flight away from Vegas,” Berman says. “I could be there every day, and I could be there in an hour and build a franchise around that.”
Thus was born not just a career, but one worthy of the American Gaming Association’s Hall of Fame. Berman, Co-Head of Macquarie Capital – Americas and Global Head of Consumer, Gaming & Leisure investment banking, will be inducted with Charles Lombardo, a slots operation pioneer who worked with MGM, Bally’s, Caesars and Seminole Gaming, and Ann Simmons Nicholson, President of the Simmons Group, in October during the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas.
Berman has advised clients on more than 100 merger & acquisition transactions with a combined value exceeding $125 billion, and led more than 240 debt and equity capital raising transactions, totaling more than $215 billion. He’s accomplished that all while earning the respect of his peers.
“I have always found David to be the consummate gentleman in this industry of characters,” says Discerning Capital Managing Partner Davis Catlin. “I have been around this business for 20 years, and I have never heard anyone speak poorly of David, which speaks to how he conducts himself. He has done so many impactful things for this industry and has been quietly behind so many landmark transactions that have shaped this industry. His fingerprints are all over this sector.”
When Berman started in the early 1990s, the gaming industry was just beginning to expand outside of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Riverboat and tribal casinos were relatively new but expanding at a rapid pace across the country. It was then that gaming companies started to get access to Wall Street capital.
What he loved most was that the gaming industry was in a high growth period.
“You’re expanding across regional markets. You’re expanding into Native American gaming, and you’re expanding internationally,” Berman says. “So, there was a need for strategic advice, as well as a lot of development capital for new projects and growth.”
Consolidation of casino companies followed, and Berman advised on several of those transactions, as entrepreneur-led casino companies were rolled up by larger competitors. The next wave – the digitization of the industry – ensued as omnichannel approaches to gaming became popular.
“On the B2B side, there were just so many opportunities to take new innovative games as well as highly recognized gaming content and commercialize it into new regions, new markets and via new distribution channels, such as Class II (electronic bingo), HHRs (historical horse racing machines) and social casinos.” Berman says.
Berman and his team will not work on just any transaction – he is selective about what mandates they take on – while always looking out for his client’s best interest.
“Every transaction we take on gets my undivided attention,” he says. “You roll up your sleeves to get the best outcome for your client and its stakeholders.”
Berman is particularly committed when he’s advising a private company, when it’s a founder who has built a business over many years.
“It’s their company. They live it; they breathe it. It becomes more personal for me,” Berman explains. “I’ve tried to build a reputation over time for thoughtful, value-add strategic advice and have never sought to ‘force’ a transaction that was not in my client’s best interest.”
Berman recognizes that being inducted into the Hall of Fame is an honor that transcends his individual accomplishments. As the first investment banker inducted, he represents a class of people who frequently labor in the background.
“I’m just, I guess, the lucky individual getting honored,” Berman says. “But in my mind it is absolutely an appreciation of the work that Wall Street has done to institutionalize this asset class, enabling gaming companies to expand and diversify.”
“David’s addition to the Hall of Fame validates something that anyone in the industry knows: much of this industry was built by financial entities,” Catlin says. “Whether it’s Apollo or Blackstone buying half of the strip or Icahn buying up distressed assets, the fingerprints of the financial markets are across Las Vegas and the gambling world. David Berman has been quietly shepherding many of these transactions, but his joining the AGA’s Hall of Fame is a validation of the intermingling of the finance and gambling world. Without the David Berman’s of the world arranging and providing capital, the Las Vegas Strip and the entire industry would be a fraction of its current size.”
