New Jersey Devils’ Vanderbeek Buying Out Minority Holder, Refinancing Debt

The New Jersey Devils are close to buying out minority shareholder Brick City’s share of the National Hockey League team and refinancing debt, the team said in a press release.

The team said it was “confident a refinancing will be completed shortly.”

The Devils reported that season ticket sales are up 130 percent over last year and that last week’s sale of single-game tickets was 260 percent above last year’s numbers at this time.

Forbes magazine last year estimated the Devils were worth $218 million, No. 11 in the league, down 2 percent from the previous year.

Curt Ritter, a spokesman for CIT Group Inc., the Devils’ lead lender, declined to comment.

Jeffrey Vanderbeek, a former member of the executive committee at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., took control of the team in 2004 in a sale valued at $125 million, according to Forbes.

Vanderbeek ran Lehman’s capital markets division from 2000 to 2002, then became head of global risk management, private equity and strategy when the company was the fourth-biggest securities firm by capital. He left in 2004 to run the Devils.

To contact the reporter on this story: Curtis Eichelberger in Washington at ceichelberge@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Sillup at msillup@bloomberg.net