I've heard the Darvish story, but what was the original source?

CHICAGO -- Tom Ricketts apparently is close to lining up three banks to arrange the $450 million financing needed to finalize his family's purchase of the Chicago Cubs.

Sports Business Journal reported Monday that Ricketts has agreements with JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America to commit to the financing needed to close his family's $900 million purchase of the team. That commitment would allow Ricketts to submit his bid to the court that is overseeing the bankruptcy filing of the team's current owner, the Tribune Co. The court would need 30 to 45 days to process the offer, according to the SBJ, and the deal could be closed by July.

Major League Baseball owners must still approve Ricketts, and could do so at their August meeting or call a special meeting to address the matter.

The Cubs have been on the market since April 2007.

Ricketts has raised $400 million for the deal by selling personal stock holdings and planned to borrow the rest. But because of the recession, the Ricketts family has had difficulty in getting the financing to complete the transaction.

It does have the feeling of a father making a family building excercise...like making breakfast on mother's day.

"You boys destroyed the house while getting beat up by your sister, now you get to clean it up together."

Here's the info from 2009 on the financing (what a waste of my lunch hour) -



So, it looks like they had to finance a total of $500 million. If you figure they're getting about 4% on that, that's debt service of $20 million. Maybe they got 10-years on amort, not sure what banks offer on deals that large, it's about $70 million/year.

Now they are putting up this new deal so soon after liquidating assets for the cash to purchase, their debt obligations are likely to increase as well, which isn't a bad thing necessarily since they are investing in what you presume to be a successful hotel. However, it might be making them sweat some.

IIRC they financed an even higher amount which briefly raised red flags with MLB (after the sale closed). Oddly I remember that extra short term financing being necessary to satisfy Sam Zell (and permit certain tax breaks he received)

I could listen to Dr. Ken talk accounting all day and all night long.

Many that is true, but an incomplete statement.

I'm a big dumb shitlib baby

The Score website sucks. Does anyone have a link to this interview or something of that nature?

There is not a damned thing wrong with people who are bull shitters.

The thing Rozner is missing is the reason for the panic. It isn't that Cub fans are finished being patient; it's that they're slowly realizing they've been lied to. They were told that Theo was running baseball operations and could do what he thought was needed to put together a winner. And it's leaked out that Theo thought the best move for his plan was to make the winning post for Darvish and Joe Ricketts wouldn't go into the pocketbook for Theo's move. He needed to put that $32 million profit somewhere else.

I'm a big dumb shitlib baby

I'm a big dumb shitlib baby

Thanks Speeps, but I still can't get the audio to play on this page. Maybe it's my computer or something.

There is not a damned thing wrong with people who are bull shitters.