Four months after the Mirage permanently closed on the Strip to make room for a rebuilt and rebranded Hard Rock Las Vegas, the Nevada Gaming Commission licensed a key figure in the property’s operation. The Commission approved Vincent Zahn, executive vice president and chief financial officer for Hard Rock International and Seminole Gaming, an entity of the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
Zahn didn’t disclose any new details about the project that CEO Jim Allen said last summer would run $4 billion to $5 billion. Demolition started in July after the closing ceremonies. The Hard Rock has yet to describe its plans for the site, beyond the iconic guitar-shaped hotel. Allen said in July details would be revealed by the first quarter of 2025.
A New Jersey native who has a degree in finance from Fordham University, worked in economic consulting for AEG, and was an equity analyst on Wall Street, Zahn got involved in the gaming industry in 2006 as an analyst at Merrill Lynch.
He joined Pinnacle Entertainment in 2011 as vice president of industrial relations and moved to Las Vegas. After eight years at Pinnacle, he went to Wynn Resorts for four years, serving as a senior vice president and treasurer before moving on to Hard Rock International for the past 18 months.
Commissioner Brian Krolicki noted that Zahn maintains financial standards of publicly traded companies, even though that’s not required for private operators like Hard Rock.
“We spent the last year and a half building out the finance team,” Zahn said. “We made a lot of moves to review and fortify our controls and reporting and build the various silos. We added a head of internal audit (Mark Yingling) based in Las Vegas, who makes sure we have a robust effort in terms of internal controls, policies, and procedures. Mark has a public-company background and knows those standards very well with more than a decade of experience at Pinnacle and Penn (Entertainment).”
Zahn said they also meet with the board of directors about the risks the company faces, so it becomes part of the culture.
“All of it is a huge focus of mine, not only to meet our fiduciary obligations, but the positive feedback that environment can have on the financial performance of the company,” Zahn said.
His eight years at Pinnacle and four years at Wynn, learning the gaming business, set his framework for today, Zahn said. He helped with Pinnacle’s acquisition of Ameristar Casinos in 2013, the separation of their real estate to GLPI, and the creation of Pinnacle as an operating company, before going through the mergers and acquisition process to sell it to Penn in 2018.
Zahn oversees Hard Rock’s financial operations globally. Hard Rock broke ground in Athens in late 2023 with a three-year construction timetable. “That will give Hard Rock a pretty significant measure of geographic expansion.”
When it comes to cybersecurity and protecting gaming companies from attack, Zahn said he had a discussion with Hard Rock’s IT team about the $5 million that’s being invested over the next 12 to 18 months.
“With that $5 million investment in cyber, we’re fortifying several key systems and access points in the company apart from the tens of millions we spend on an annual basis that maintain our cyber infrastructure,” Zahn said.
“You need to be continuously vigilant with it. The cybersecurity panel in our company that we put together in late 2023 meets every month or two and we constantly talk about issues and investments that we can make and potential areas of vulnerability in our company and the industry in general. It needs to be a focus, and you need to continue to make investments in it, and we’re committed as a company to doing that.”
