Harrah`s Entertainment, President & CEO.

(From CEOWire)

Byline: Mark Haines

MARK HAINES, CNBC ANCHOR: Place your bets. Within the hour, three companies - that`s three companies - will gather in Chicago to bid for a dormant Illinois gaming license. Harrah`s Entertainment has emerged as the leading bidder.

Expansion has been the name of the game for Harrah`s, as it pursues growth opportunities throughout the U.S. and in the U.K. And Harrah`s has just acquired the rights to the Horseshoe Casino name and the world series of poker. Take a look at a one-year chart - gone from 36 to 56. Right now, it`s around 54, just a tad off the high of, oh, about a week ago. Gary Loveman is CEO of Harrah`s Entertainment, joins us this morning from Chicago. Good morning, sir. Thanks very much for being with us. GARY LOVEMAN, HARRAH`S ENTERTAINMENT CEO: Good morning, Mark. Pleasure to be here. HAINES: Is this Illinois license that`s up for grabs - is this going to be a bidding war or what?

LOVEMAN: Well, it`s a little bit hard to tell. This is a novel procedure. No one`s ever been through something like this, Mark. It`s a combination of the financial terms and also the benefits that come with the site, which in our case is in the community of Waukegan. Now, we think the combination of the compelling nature of the site and the financial terms we offer to the state is going to wind up with us having this 10 license. HAINES: OK, I take it from you`re telling me - and please correct me if I`m wrong - that it`s not going to be a simple, easy to compare process here - that there are going to be complexities in the different offers, take a while to sort through them. LOVEMAN: Well, I think that`s right. The terms of the decision rest with the terms of the Riverboat Gaming Act in Illinois, which specify the compelling nature of the community, the economic need in the town, the financial terms that we offer and a variety of other criteria that the decisionmakers here will have to evaluate. HAINES: All right. Next question is why do you want this license? A lot of competition, and Illinois has just raised taxed on operations like that. LOVEMAN: Well, that`s true. The tax rate here has been burdensome. One of the compelling provisions of this is that the tax rate will revert to a less severe standard once this license is activated. Chicagoland remains a terrific gaming market for us. We`re active in this market; there`s a tremendous number of gamblers in this market and a relatively modest supply. So it`s - it remains a very attractive place for us. RICHARD FISHER, GUEST HOST: Gary, you`ve done something that very few people do. You went from being a popular professor at the Harvard Business School to being a successful CEO. Tell me how you differentiate yourself. Your focus on clients seems to be a differentiating factor for the company. Is that correct?

LOVEMAN: It is. I mean, this really is an outgrowth of the area that I used to teach at the school, which is that you can make a lot more money simply by keeping your best customers very highly satisfied with what you offer them.

And that`s an especially challenging objective in the casino business, where, of course, we have a lot of customers that don`t always come away ahead on their business with us. We offer ...