Related News:
Mark Cuban Is Cleared to Bid on Texas Rangers by Major League Baseball
Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks, was cleared by Major League Baseball to bid on the bankrupt Texas Rangers, his lawyer said.
Any approval for Cuban was preliminary and whoever wins the auction still needs to gain the support of the 30 MLB team owners to complete the sale, Thomas Lauria, an attorney for a competing group of bidders, said in an interview.
Cuban, a co-founder of the TV network HDNet, hasn’t decided whether to join two other bidders who qualified to participate in an Aug. 4 auction, said his attorney, Clifton R. Jessup Jr.
“The biggest obstacle my client has is we have 12 days to do all the due diligence,” Jessup said today during a bankruptcy court hearing in Fort Worth, Texas.
A group led by club President Nolan Ryan and Pittsburgh sports attorney Chuck Greenberg will act as the lead bidder. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge D. Michael Lynn today refused to delay the auction, rejecting claims by lenders owed more than $400 million that it is rigged in favor of the Ryan-Greenberg group.
The lenders wanted to put off an auction until Sept. 30 so more bidders could vie for the team, potentially driving up the price, their attorney, Andrew M. Leblanc, said in court today.
Jessup said Cuban only decided to pursue the team after Lynn approved rules last week setting up the auction. Cuban, who would prefer to submit his own bid, may join with an existing group to speed the process, Jessup said.
Rival Bidders
Houston businessman Jim Crane, who unsuccessfully bid for the team before its bankruptcy, and Dallas businessman Jeff Beck, have also been approved by baseball officials to participate in the auction, MLB attorney Sander L. Esserman said in court last week.
Cuban is concerned about a lawsuit filed as part of the bankruptcy case by JPMorgan Chase & Co. over who owns the lease for Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas, Jessup said in court. The bank, acting as agent for lenders, claimed the baseball team breached the terms of a loan by taking over the lease.
Transferring the lease to Texas Rangers Baseball Partners made it harder for lenders to collect at least $411 million owed by the team’s owner, Tom Hicks’s HSG Sports Group LLC, JPMorgan said in the lawsuit filed July 16. The bank asked the judge to return the lease to the control of an affiliate of Texas Rangers Baseball.
$500 Million Deal
After filing for bankruptcy in May, the Rangers sought court permission to sell the club to the group led by Ryan, a Hall of Fame pitcher, and Greenberg in a transaction valued at more than $500 million.
After the auction, Lynn will consider approving the company’s bankruptcy exit plan, which details how the money generated from a sale would pay creditors.
At the start of today’s hearing, Rangers’ manager Ron Washington told Lynn that morale among the players is “unbelievably exceptional.” The team holds first place in the American League’s Western Division with less than half the regular season left to play.
A playoff run could bring the team an additional $14 million, Ryan said in court yesterday.
The case is In re Texas Rangers Baseball Partners, 10-43400, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Texas (Fort Worth).
To contact the reporters on this story: Steven Church in Wilmington, Delaware, at schurch@bloomberg.net; Thomas Korosec in Dallas at tkorosec@sbcglobal.net.
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page