From the NY Post:Mets owners on Friday said they’re considering selling 20-25 percent of the team to "strategic partners" because of the financial uncertainty created by the lawsuit filed against them by the trustee in the Bernie Madoff bankruptcy case.
Fred Wilpon said the decision to offer part of the team was not made under pressure from Major League Baseball.
"At the outset I want to emphasize what we are discussing today has not and will not affect the Mets day-to-day operations and control," the Mets CEO said.
"Let me stress, at the end of the day, we may or may not do anything."
Jeff Wilpon, the team's COO, said the offer does not include interest in SNY or Citi Field.
The team said in a statement they have hired investment bank Allen & Co. to explore alternatives, including adding “one or more strategic partners.”
Adviser Steve Greenberg said he expects "robust interest" in the part of the team available, which could be worth over $200 million.
The Wilpons are allegedly "distraught" over the popular belief that they profited along with Madoff. But not everyone's buying that.
A local liquor mogul and a group including Martin Luther King III are reportedly potential buyers.
Oh, and the All Star Game is coming to Citifield in 2013.
16 comments:
Who is going to want to buy a piece of a team (and a not very good team at that) and not have much of a voice in running it?
To borrow a line spoken about the late owner of the Yankees: "There is nothing so limited as being a limiting partner of the Wilpons."
They are going to sell their controlling interest as well. They reap the ill gotten gains and now will need to repay the victims who lost their money in the scam. So the Wilpons are party to Madoff as shills destroying families around them in their own community. May they lose most of their fortune in the process, selling assets at fire sale prices.
No question that everything's tumbling around the Wilpons. The only way that they're going to be able to sell abything is if they give up control of the team. Absolutely no objection on my part.
Who would've thought when he sold his share to the Wilpons that Nelson Doubleday was the real baseball brains? This family has brought New York National League Baseball to a new low with a ballpark designed to shut out the working class fan, virtual abandonment of any brand or tradition the team had and bad PR moves. Any accounts I've heard of business people I know dealing with Jeff Wilpon always come back with one word: asshole.
I so wish this team gets into the hands of more baseball-oriented controlling interests who know what it means to have a NY Major League Baseball team...who knows the fans want something more permanent than a ballpark sold to the highest bidder for naming rights.
Play (with my) ball!!!
mets suck, and now the wilpons wont get there hands on the willets pointland grab , this is great news .
Bloomberg spent $ billions to build two new stadia for the Yankees and the Mets. What percent of the teams did the City acquire for our public money?
Curse of the Iron Triangle, at work here.
Meat the Mets!
Eat the Mets.
Step right up and beat the Mets...
Just sayin'...
Will ya look at that pair of sour faced pickle pusses!
Maybe the Wilpons can ask buffalo butt "granny" Shulman and her dwarf compatriot Wellington Chen to help them out with...perhaps (???) the $$$$$ from all the machine pols' offshore accounts they've been hoarding for years.
I'll bet the Staviskys can buy a small country with what they've got stashed alone!
The Mets play like shit anyway...so
GO YANKEES!
"Wilpons forced to sell part of team"
Let 'em sell the part that keeps losing!
Maybe the Wilpons can ask buffalo butt "granny" Shulman and her dwarf compatriot Wellington Chen to help them out
How ironic!
http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2010/04/claire-shulman-holds-fundraiser-to-pay.html
What comes around, goes around.
Can't wait till Wilpon has to return his ill gotten gains. It's amazin that he took his own tribe to the cleaners. Now it's payback time.
i recall that a local U.S. politician had the n.y.c.High School Baseball Championship game diverted ,from the then Shea Stadium ,so that his daughter could be married at home plate.
team owner+politician+Bernie = ???????
I say this as a Mets fan since 1962-- boycott the Mets until the Wilpons are gone. At this point, i'd rrather go to a Yankee game.
could the politician have been democrat congressman GARY ACKERMAN?
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