Adelson Ousts President at Las Vegas Sands

(MoneyWatch)  Las Vegas Sands Co. chief executive Sheldon Adelson told reporters today that he's at the helm of the company now that William Weidner, its former president, resigned under pressure.

Weidner, who was with the company 13 years, said he resigned March 8, but Adelson and other board members reported they told Weidner they wanted his resignation on March 4, for a "potpourri of issues." Apparently the board had already picked Michael Leven, a board member and chief executive of the Georgia Aquarium, to take his place.

"We just sort of helped him out a little bit. ... We helped him resign a little bit," Adelson told the Associated Press at an investors' forum in New York.

Weidner didn't seem very bitter. But then again, how can you be when the company you are helping to run is in dire straits?

"He's the CEO, he's the majority owner, and just recently he's insisted on having more control over the day-to-day operations," Weidner told Bloomberg News. "I figured it was time for me to then move on."

Las Vegas Sands stock had been sinking like a stone until Tuesday, when the stock price finally went up about 17 percent. Is anyone surprised? With negative reports about Las Vegas Sands -- from its boondoggle in Macao to its crippling debt -- the company had to do something other than operate as if it were business as usual. By ousting Weidner and Adelson making a public show of taking the reins of the company, it may boost its shareholders' confidence in its leadership, raise the stock price and even increase its cashflow.

If getting rid of one executive can do all that, then why not?