The Sale of the Cubs

[Soriano12]

uggg...it is like Bug Selig is the pimp of the Chicago Cubs. Doesn't really feel right.

[Amazing_Grace]

But it's a process that will be fair and open,"

 

Completely untrue.

 

Indeed so. It certainly seems that this is a deliberate attempt to allow the owners to decide who they want to buy the Cubs without getting into a public debate or having a high bidder that they don't like start a public feud with them that would end up looking very bad for the 'powers that be' in MLB.

[E.J.]

Link

 

I'm surprised it said the Cubs would be sold this summer with it probably going past the World Series. I though the team wasn't supposed to be sold until after the season was over?

[RegulusBlue]

Its troubling that we can't sell to whom we want.

 

We claim to run a democracy here, but we rarely get to do things without restriction or higher interests influencing things.

[Lefty]

Its troubling that we can't sell to whom we want.

 

We claim to run a democracy here, but we rarely get to do things without restriction or higher interests influencing things.

 

Major league baseball is a business with a product. Would you want to be forced to take in a partner you don't like or don't trust? In a free country you don't have to. Maybe you'd like to be a Venezuelan farmer.

[Soul]

Anyone here trust Selig to pimp the right guy on us? I sure as hell don't.

 

Who the heck is this guy anyway? I've never heard of him until now. Canning? Who? Selig's trying to push a lame duck on us to keep us down, dadgum it!

[Soriano12]

Its troubling that we can't sell to whom we want.

 

We claim to run a democracy here, but we rarely get to do things without restriction or higher interests influencing things.

 

Major league baseball is a business with a product. Would you want to be forced to take in a partner you don't like or don't trust? In a free country you don't have to. Maybe you'd like to be a Venezuelan farmer.

 

Good money in that

http://www.radaronline.com/features/images/2006/11/cocaine-cowboy-01.jpg

[Cubfanintheknow]

Anyone here trust Selig to pimp the right guy on us? I sure as hell don't.

 

Who the heck is this guy anyway? I've never heard of him until now. Canning? Who? Selig's trying to push a lame duck on us to keep us down, dadgum it!

 

You're starting to sound like Hawk Harrelson. Cut it out! :D

[Banedon]

I'd love to know where he got some of that info. For example, the part about the sale including Wrigley is completely contrary to what we've heard previously. There's no mention at all of other candidates, like Colangelo or Cuban, and it says that the bidding will begin this summer, when my understanding is that the sale process wouldn't begin until the offseason.

[jersey cubs fan]

For example, the part about the sale including Wrigley is completely contrary to what we've heard previously.

 

Not really. There was talk about Wrigley not necessarily being part of the sale. That's insane. A sale of the Cubs that doesn't include Wrigley makes absolutely no sense at all.

[Soul]

Anyone here trust Selig to pimp the right guy on us? I sure as hell don't.

 

Who the heck is this guy anyway? I've never heard of him until now. Canning? Who? Selig's trying to push a lame duck on us to keep us down, dadgum it!

 

You're starting to sound like Hawk Harrelson. Cut it out! :D

 

I know, I can't stop! I've got Hawk disease. Dad-GUM IT!

[RedIvyCub]

Its troubling that we can't sell to whom we want.

 

We claim to run a democracy here, but we rarely get to do things without restriction or higher interests influencing things.

 

Just curious and not trying to cause issues. Just a serious question based on the semantics of your inquiry. You currently own the Cubs????

[RedIvyCub]

I'd love to know where he got some of that info. For example, the part about the sale including Wrigley is completely contrary to what we've heard previously. There's no mention at all of other candidates, like Colangelo or Cuban, and it says that the bidding will begin this summer, when my understanding is that the sale process wouldn't begin until the offseason.

 

This is why we should not believe everything we read in the media. They don't know the whole story all of the time.

 

JMHO, Tribune and MLB are trying to keep this whole process OTDL.

[Lefty]

the deal isn't falling through.

 

"Tribune Co. (TRB) accepted for payment 126 million of the 218.1 million shares tendered in the offer, at a price of $34 a share.

 

The shares tendered represent about 90% of shares outstanding, and the shares that Tribune will buy back represent about 52% of shares outstanding.

 

Following the repurchase, Tribune said it will have about 117 million shares outstanding. The company said it will begin payment for the shares no later than June 5. "

 

The SLM deal fell through today and Tribune stock is down 2% in an up market. Just because the deal has started doesn't mean it will be finished. There is another huge step to go contingent on approval and financing. It is not a given.

 

Tribune basically bought back half its stock and took on a huge amount of debt. If the Zell deal falls through the Tribune will just be another overleveraged company which has to repair its balance sheet.

[oldcubsfan]

The SLM deal didn't fall through yet. The buyer is worried about legislation hindering student loans. You probably should read the details, the problem has nothing to do with financing.

[Lefty]

The SLM deal didn't fall through yet. The buyer is worried about legislation hindering student loans. You probably should read the details, the problem has nothing to do with financing.

 

I am fully aware of the details. A deal isn't done 'til it closes. Credit spreads are widening. Stay tuned.

[jersey cubs fan]

By Dena Aubin

NEW YORK, July 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. junk bond market is

being shaken by the subprime market, raising concerns about the

viability of a number of proposed high-yield debt sales which

are tied to company buyouts.

Junk bonds sold off on Tuesday, turning an already fragile

financing market uglier, after ratings warnings on billions of

dollars of subprime mortgage-related bonds snuffed out appetite

for risky debt.

A number of deals have already been pulled because of poor

market conditions or balking investors.

"No one is going to come into this market with a deal

unless they feel like they have to get it done," said Justin

Monteith, market analyst for high-yield research firm KDP

Investment Advisors.

"There's a lot of money at risk and it's going to have the

impact of essentially resetting the pricing of risk across all

markets," he added.

The waning risk appetite cast a further cloud over

financings for private equity buyouts, which have already been

running into trouble as investors balk at loose terms and

increasingly high leverage on many debt sales.

 

"A problem with the market is that those (private equity)

guys got too aggressive as far as how much debt they were

putting on these companies," said Andrew Feltus, portfolio

manager for Pioneer Investment Management's high-yield fund.

"We passed on a lot of deals in the last couple of weeks

because there's no free cash flow."

At least five companies have pulled junk bond sales in

recent weeks. Among the latest was a $600 million issue from

Swift & Co., which was scrapped on Monday as the company said

it turned to other financing.

Other companies to pull deals recently included:

ServiceMaster Co. ; Catalyst Paper Corp. ; and

Ahold's U.S. Foodservice and Magnum Coal Co.

 

$87 BLN IN DEALS EXPECTED

In all, about $87 billion of high-yield bond deals are

expected over the rest of this year, including large buyout

financings for Alltel Corp. , Tribune Co. , TXU

Corp. , and others, according to Bank of America.

The large calendar of pending LBO financings has pushed

prices lower on recently issued LBO bonds as buyers anticipate

more supply, investors said.

"We've generally seen a repricing of a lot of the more

leveraged transactions in the market," said Paul Scanlon,

portfolio manager for Putnam Investment Management in Boston.

However, "there's still appetite in the market for sound

issuers and sound covenant packages with appropriate pricing,"

he said.

 

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--A group led by private equity firm J.C. Flowers & Co.

has told SLM Corp. (SLM) that it may not carry out its $25 billion buyout of the

company, better known as Sallie Mae, due to legislative proposals that would cut

federal subsidies to student lenders.

 

Sallie Mae said in a press release that the group - which also includes Bank

of America Corp. (BAC), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and private equity firm

Friedman Fleischer & Lowe LLC - told it the legislation "could result in a

failure of the conditions to the closing of the merger to be satisfied."

 

Sallie Mae said it strongly disagrees with the assertion, outlined in a

one-sentence letter sent Tuesday, and plans to proceed toward closing the merger

as rapidly as possible.

 

Shares in SLM plunged on the news and closed down 9.8% at $52.15 - well below

the $60 per share buyout price. The cost of protecting SLM bonds against default

fell sharply but then rebounded in volatile trade. Default protection on $10

million worth of SLM bonds recently cost $232,000 to $240,000 a year, down from

about $275,000 before the news but up from around $185,000 immediately

afterward, according to Scott Macdonald of Aladdin Capital Management.

 

Share prices for Nelnet Inc. (NNI) and Student Loan Corp. (STU) also suffered.

Shares in other companies with pending leveraged buyouts - including Tribune Co.

(TRB), First Data Corp. (FDC), Archstone-Smith Trust (ASN) and Alltel Corp. (AT)

- dipped around the time of Sallie Mae's announcement.

[ctcf]

Cliffs?

[A New Era]

Its troubling that we can't sell to whom we want.

 

We claim to run a democracy here, but we rarely get to do things without restriction or higher interests influencing things.

 

Major league baseball is a business with a product. Would you want to be forced to take in a partner you don't like or don't trust? In a free country you don't have to. Maybe you'd like to be a Venezuelan farmer.

 

Maybe I can sum it up better than Regulus. .

 

I hate rich greedy heartless snobby bastards like the higher ups in MLB! PUKE!

[Lefty]

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- If the decision by Sallie Mae's buyers to back out on the $25

billion deal happened in a vacuum, it would be easy to accept that legislative tampering in the

student loan industry was putting a kibosh on the deal...

Subsidy cuts indeed will be a problem for Sallie Mae, but it's the leverage

private-equity firm J.C. Flowers & Co. plans to pile on the lender that may be more of a risk.

Flowers and minority buyers Bank of America Corp. and J.P. Morgan Chase

& Co. are well aware of the squeeze in the markets for leverage deals.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.'s trouble in soliciting backing for its $26 billion First Data Corp.

buy is a prime example.

"What's happened is that buyers are not willing to take the risk that was acceptable 60 days or

so ago," banking analyst Gerard Cassidy of RBC Capital Markets said. "The sponsors are being

forced to take more of the paper themselves. People are suspect of the funding for all of these

big deals."

[Amazing_Grace]

Its troubling that we can't sell to whom we want.

 

We claim to run a democracy here, but we rarely get to do things without restriction or higher interests influencing things.

 

Major league baseball is a business with a product. Would you want to be forced to take in a partner you don't like or don't trust? In a free country you don't have to. Maybe you'd like to be a Venezuelan farmer.

 

This is not true. MLB is not a "business" in any sense of the word. It is an organization, or cartel if you prefer, made of several businesses attempting to monopolistically control the market for a single product, baseball. In such organizations, there is a highly variable amount of cohesion and control over the actions of individual members. In the case of MLB, the organization exercises relatively little control over how the individual businesses make decisions such as prices, spending, payroll, etc. The only meaningful thing MLB does as an organization is negotiate with the union for the terms of player contracts, and the union is as much responsible for this situation as is MLB itself.

 

In any event, I really sincerely doubt that the MLB owners will actually veto someone owning the team for anything other than financial reasons. Very few of them want the league to interfere with their internal operations, and probably all of them would like to be able to sell their team to the highest bidder at some point without worrying about the league looking over their shoulder.

[YearofDaCubs]

Looks like another group is in the running to purchase the Cubs now. I forgot their name but it was mentioned on the Score and it was a family who made their money through Ameritrade.

 

EDIT: The Ricketts family.

[Twiggy]

Looks like another group is in the running to purchase the Cubs now. I forgot their name but it was mentioned on the Score and it was a family who made their money through Ameritrade.

 

EDIT: The Ricketts family.

 

Family is said to be worth 2+ billion. The son has a firm in Chicago, and alot of the family has Chicago ties along to Ameritrade based out of Omaha, Nebraska.

[OBPMatters]

According to Rick Morrisey's lastest on Chicagosports.com, Cuban has submitted an "application" to purchase the Cubs.

[vance_the_cubs_fan]

Here's an article on the Ricketts family's interest in the Cubs.

 

The Tribune report relied on anonymous sources who said the Ricketts family had signed a nondisclosure agreement with Cubs owner Tribune Co., which plans to sell the club after the season. The Ricketts family is reportedly also filling out a Major League Baseball application, so it will be eligible to bid on the franchise.

 

Astronomical prices are expected for the Cubs. Forbes estimated the value of the Cubs at $592 million in April. Only four baseball franchises had higher values in the magazine's annual list: the Yankees at $1.2 billion, the New York Mets at $736 million, the Boston Red Sox at $724 million and the Los Angeles Dodgers at $632 million.

 

But the Ricketts family likely has the resources. In March, Forbes estimated that Joe Ricketts and his family were worth about $2.3 billion.