Houston Rockets owner lays off 70% of his employees for his business' well-being.
A Concerned Billionaire
Tilman Fertitta said he’s had to lay off roughly 40,000 workers at his casino, hotel and restaurant empire to limit the economic damage to his company due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Landry’s restaurants, Golden Nugget and Houston Rockets owner wants authorities to allow his businesses to reopen at a limited capacity in the next couple of weeks.
He said restaurants and casinos could be allowed to operate at 30% to 40% of capacity to soften the economic impact of the restrictions and allow companies to stay in business.
Company Health Crisis
“I think what we are doing with the shut-down is good but in a few weeks people will need to be around people,” Fertitta said in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday. “Otherwise you are going to go into an economic crisis that is going to take us years to dig ourselves out of.”
Fertitta also told Bloomberg he is confident his companies have enough cash to last through the COVID-19 crisis. Fertitta says most of his restaurants that haven’t closed are limited to takeout business, which equals only a very small percentage of the usual income.
“Remember, that last million in sales is your most profitable sales. It’s just like any business,” said Fertitta.
According to the Texas billionaire, his company has been burning through a few million dollars of cash per day, prior to laying off 70% of his employees. He stated that he would like to hire every employee back and that his companies are basically doing no business.
Bottomline
"This is very hard on a lot of working families but we have to survive or there is no company.” Fetitta said.
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