- The Nevada Gaming Fee (NGC) has granted key govt licenses to MGM CFO Jonathan Halkyard and Venetian CEO Patrick Nichols
- Each served provisionally for years whereas exhaustive background checks delayed closing approval
- Nichols was pressed on compliance amid Strip casinos’ current cash‑laundering scandals
Two of the Strip’s strongest executives — Jonathan Halkyard of MGM Resorts Worldwide and Patrick Nichols of The Venetian — have cleared Nevada’s regulatory gauntlet. On Thursday, the Nevada Gaming Fee (NGC) unanimously accredited each males for key govt licenses, as reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. a number of years after each had already stepped into their company roles.
Jonathan Halkyard has served as MGM Resorts Worldwide’s CFO since January 2021. (Picture: MGM Resorts)
In Nevada, anybody with direct affect over on line casino operations should maintain a key govt license, a credential designed to ensure integrity, monetary duty, and compliance with gaming regulation.
The method is notoriously sluggish: exhaustive background checks comb by way of litigation historical past, monetary data, and worldwide enterprise ties. Executives are allowed to imagine their posts whereas functions are pending, although they continue to be “provisional” till regulators log out.
Halkyard has been MGM’s chief monetary officer since January 2021. Nichols took over as president and chief govt officer of the Venetian in August 2022. Each have spent years in provisional standing, in a position to deal with company finance and technique, however barred from exercising closing authority over regulated gaming operations till Thursday’s vote.
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Patrick Nichols has served as president and CEO of the Venetian since August 2022. (Picture: LinkedIn)
Halkyard’s résumé stretches again to Harrah’s Lake Tahoe in 1999, from which he rose to CFO of Caesars Leisure in 2006 earlier than stints at NV Power and Prolonged Keep America.
Nichols joined the Venetian in 2008 — simply after the Palazzo opened and he graduated Cornell College — serving to to launch Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. He turned Senior VP of Technique and Enterprise Growth on the Cosmopolitan in 2018, after serving because the property’s director of strategic planning because it opened in 2010. He returned to the Venetian as president and CEO in 2022, below new proprietor Apollo International Administration.
“I don’t sit on our compliance committee, however I’ve attended each assembly since I’ve been on the resort,” he replied. “There’s nobody buyer, nobody determination value my repute, the state’s repute, or the Venetian’s repute. Our compliance posture begins with me, and the staff is aware of that.”
