According to legend, infamous career bank robber Willie Sutton was once asked by reporter Mitch Ohnstad why he robbed banks. Sutton replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Whether he actually said it or not, people do what they do because that’s where the money is. Corporations, or more accurately the executives in charge of them rubber-stamped by their shareholders, merge or spin off because that’s where the money is at the time. Where is the money now? It’s in free debt and equity mania. All that matters is the name. The bigger you make it, the more money flows into it. Nothing else matters.

And so we turn to a new year, and the massive mergers in the casino and gaming industry continue. Debt is free, equity is money, and there seems to be no limit to how big these companies can get. The latest merger on the docket looks to be MGM and Entain, AKA the financial engineering artist formerly known as, which is already a massive umbrella company of disparate gaming assets cobbled together with still more debt and equity.

Nevermind that the United Kingdom, one of Entain’s core markets, is shut down again until March, and who knows how long after that. Nevermind that Las Vegas, MGM’s core market, is a ghost town for who knows how long. Nevermind that Entain has suspended dividends indefinitely, and MGM has pared them down to a penny a share. None of that matters because the only thing better than a humongous company, is an even more humongous company. After this, what’s even going to be left of the UK gaming industry besides 888 and a smattering of other small players?

If anyone can make speculators just a bit wary of what’s going on here, it’s Carl Icahn. The man hasn’t maintained his position as a top dog on Wall Street for decades by being a lucky trend chaser. He’s done it by creating the trends, timing them with money flows, and then selling into them. He was able to fold Caesars into Eldorado and then immediately dump his stake in July once the deal was completed. I’d warned him not to push the deal, but that seems silly now, given that he apparently never had any intention of owning the massive company he helped create, but rather let someone else try to tame the beast. Icahn knew what he was doing the whole time, as he almost always has throughout his sensational career. And now, after his big deals are done, he’s sounding the alarm. “In my day I’ve seen a lot of wild rallies and a lot of mispriced stocks, but there is one thing they all have in common,” he told CNBC yesterday. Eventually they hit a wall…It’s always said it’s different this time, but it never turns out to be the truth.”