and concerns about Hilton's debt level. An agreement was finally reached for Hilton to spin off its casinos as a new public company, Park Place Entertainment, which would immediately buy Grand Casinos, owner of three properties in Mississippi, for $650 million in stock plus $550 million in assumed debt. Grand's operations outside of Mississippi, including three Indian casinos it managed, were spun off as a separate company, Lakes Entertainment, before the merger. Goldberg was installed as CEO of the combined company, which had eighteen casinos. In 2000, Park Place purchased Caesars World, whose casinos included Caesars Palace and Caesars Atlantic City, from Starwood for $3 billion. The four Caesars Pocono Resorts were excluded from the sale. In 2001, Park Place was named to the Gaming Hall of Fame. In September 2003, at the annual shareholder meeting a resolution to change the name of the company to Caesars Entertainment was approved and on January 6, 2004 the name change officially took effect. The company's ticker symbol was changed to CZR. The primary reason for the name change was that management felt that it would help the company to capitalize on the Caesars brand name. On June 18, 2004, Caesars sold the Las Vegas Hilton hotel-casino to Colony Capital for $280 million. A Caesars spokesperson stated that the sale would help the company focus on its major casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. On July 14, 2004, Harrah's Entertainment agreed to purchase Caesars Entertainment for over $5 billion. The acquisition was completed in 2005. In turn, Harrah's was itself acquired and taken private in 2006 by a group of private equity funds including Apollo Global Management, The Blackstone Group and TPG Capital and later took on the Caesars Entertainment name. The company sold Caesars Tahoe in June 2005 for $45 million to Columbia Sussex, owner of the nearby Horizon Casino. It was one of a series of sales made by Caesars and Harrah's to avoid anti-trust issues with their proposed merger. Properties owned when acquired by Harrah's Bally's Atlantic City, including Claridge Casino at Bally's and Wild Wild West Casino, Atlantic City, New Jersey Bally's Las Vegas Bally's Casino Tunica Caesars Atlantic City, Atlantic City New Jersey Caesars Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada Caesars Palace at Sea — no longer on board Crystal Cruises Caesars Indiana, Elizabeth, Indiana Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, Nevada Flamingo Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada Flamingo Laughlin, Laughlin, Nevada