Wilbur Ross and Carl Icahn could have sunk Donald Trump.
In September 1990, the two men, who have emerged as part of the president-elect’s inner circle, represented bondholders in Trump’s Taj Mahal casino.
The troubled casino had just missed an interest payment on the bonds, and the two men were leaning toward pushing the Atlantic City business into bankruptcy, interviews with the men reveal.
“We could have foreclosed [on the Trump Taj Mahal], and he would have been gone,” Ross, the chief restructuring adviser for Rothschild & Co., which was representing the bondholders at the time, told The Post, speaking of the eventual 45th president of the US.
Icahn was the Taj’s No. 1 bondholder.
Such a move would have tarnished the reputation of the real estate mogul — and perhaps dashed any possibility, even 26 years later, that he would run for president.
Ross is now expected to be named the Trump administration’s Secretary of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
On Nov. 16, 1990, the first day bondholders could bankrupt the Taj, Ross recommended a forced bankruptcy because the two sides were not near a deal, according to an Aug. 17, 1992, court deposition.
But negotiations continued and showed enough promise for Ross to hold off that day, over the objections of some bondholders, the deposition shows.
“A number of the holders preferred my original recommendation, namely that we file and put them in and fight it out with [Trump] in [bankruptcy], rather than go along,” Ross said in his deposition.
But during the monthslong negotiations, Ross began to respect the man who would be the future president-elect. Ross flew to Atlantic City, without Trump, on the mogul’s helicopter, for restructuring talks. A limo met him. As it approached the casino, people pressed to get close to the car, thinking Trump was inside.
“When we saw Trump people swarming all over him,” we realized his star power, Ross said.
“Even then, they were cheering him,” Icahn told The Post. “They loved him. I was impressed.”
Ross said he also liked how Trump came to every meeting with the bondholders and was properly prepared. Still, the situation was tenuous.
Ross called on Icahn to help persuade one larger bondholder at a Plaza Hotel bondholder meeting to support a deal, according to Icahn, who said Trump’s final offer was too good to reject.
Icahn’s words worked. In 1991, the bondholders signed one of the first prepackaged bankruptcies, in which they got a 50 percent stake in the Taj. Trump retained about a 25 percent stake.
“[Trump] said that he was very unhappy with the deal, that he never intended to make the kind of concessions that were there. But nonetheless he did execute the thing,” Ross said in the deposition.
“This could have been much worse for Trump,” a bondholder source involved in the restructuring told The Post. To outsiders it seemed Trump was still running the casino.
“There is no question that winning was paramount to Trump back then,” the source said. “He needed to come out with his name and brand intact, and that is why he pushed us hard.”