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Wilponzis borrow another $40 million to pay bills


Bugg

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Fred got tired of talking to his lawyer in his dark, cold office via dixie cups and string. Lets's see-$500 million to Chase, $25 million to MLB. $28 million for NY state bonds and this $40 million. That's what we know about. Sell the team already. And "trying" is the operative word-after they screwed Einhorn, nobody is lining up to buy into a team that on paper loses serious coin. As we've discussed between SNYand it's self-dealing rights fees and depreciation on anew stadium, cash-wise the losses are almost certainly mostly paper, though if they draw less than 2 million fans and ratings go in the toilet it will get worse. This is a joke.

Mets owners take out $40M loan

By JOSH KOSMAN

Last Updated: 8:22 AM, December 13, 2011

Posted: 12:39 AM, December 13, 2011

The owners of the cash-strapped New York Mets have taken a $40 million bank loan while they try to sell minority stakes in the team.

A Mets spokesman confirmed yesterday that a single major bank extended it the “bridge” loan in the last month or two. In November 2010, the club borrowed $25 million from Major League Baseball to tide it over.

Fred Wilpon and co-owner Saul Katz are trying to line up as many as 10 buyers for stakes worth $20 million to $30 million apiece.

Last month, the owners sweetened their pitch to prospective investors and said they are willing to pay 3 percent interest annually on the stakes over six years.

“The process for the sale of minority shares in the team continues to go very well,” the team said yesterday.

The Mets arranged for the new loan as some big bills were coming due. Last month, the Mets made a $15 million to $20 million revenue-sharing payment to MLB.

On Thursday, the team must pay the New York City Industrial Development Agency $26 million for interest on bonds sold to build Citi Field.

A source close to the situation said that the bridge loan was borrowed for working capital, and an interest payment to the city would qualify.

When MLB extended the $25 million emergency loan last year, it pressured the Mets to find a minority owner. The ongoing process has taken more than a year; a $200 million deal to sell a minority stake to hedge fund manager David Einhorn collapsed.

The Mets’ existing bank lenders, led by JPMorgan Chase, are owed about $500 million. Although the team will lose roughly $70 million this year, the lenders believe they will be repaid because the Mets would fetch about $900 million through an outright sale.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/mets_owners_take_out_loan_8S2E5Hmm0IANBlnf5NvCbN#ixzz1gQJOMX9B

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Fred got tired of talking to his lawyer in his dark, cold office via dixie cups and string. Lets's see-$500 million to Chase, $25 million to MLB. $28 million for NY state bonds and this $40 million. That's what we know about. Sell the team already. And "trying" is the operative word-after they screwed Einhorn, nobody is lining up to buy into a team that on paper loses serious coin. As we've discussed between SNYand it's self-dealing rights fees and depreciation on anew stadium, cash-wise the losses are almost certainly mostly paper, though if they draw less than 2 million fans and ratings go in the toilet it will get worse. This is a joke.

Mets owners take out $40M loan

By JOSH KOSMAN

Last Updated: 8:22 AM, December 13, 2011

Posted: 12:39 AM, December 13, 2011

The owners of the cash-strapped New York Mets have taken a $40 million bank loan while they try to sell minority stakes in the team.

A Mets spokesman confirmed yesterday that a single major bank extended it the “bridge” loan in the last month or two. In November 2010, the club borrowed $25 million from Major League Baseball to tide it over.

Fred Wilpon and co-owner Saul Katz are trying to line up as many as 10 buyers for stakes worth $20 million to $30 million apiece.

Last month, the owners sweetened their pitch to prospective investors and said they are willing to pay 3 percent interest annually on the stakes over six years.

“The process for the sale of minority shares in the team continues to go very well,” the team said yesterday.

The Mets arranged for the new loan as some big bills were coming due. Last month, the Mets made a $15 million to $20 million revenue-sharing payment to MLB.

On Thursday, the team must pay the New York City Industrial Development Agency $26 million for interest on bonds sold to build Citi Field.

A source close to the situation said that the bridge loan was borrowed for working capital, and an interest payment to the city would qualify.

When MLB extended the $25 million emergency loan last year, it pressured the Mets to find a minority owner. The ongoing process has taken more than a year; a $200 million deal to sell a minority stake to hedge fund manager David Einhorn collapsed.

The Mets’ existing bank lenders, led by JPMorgan Chase, are owed about $500 million. Although the team will lose roughly $70 million this year, the lenders believe they will be repaid because the Mets would fetch about $900 million through an outright sale.

Read more: http://www.nypost.co...N#ixzz1gQJOMX9B

The terms that Einhorn negotiated were actually very favorable-I wish I had the money to do the same-A guarantee of your money back within a certain amount of years, and after that still having a percentage of the team, or ability to be the majority owner.

He screwed up by opening his fat yap and acting as an owner already.

Bugg, did a member of the Wilpon family abuse you as a young child, because you certainly have a hard-on for them.

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The terms that Einhorn negotiated were actually very favorable-I wish I had the money to do the same-A guarantee of your money back within a certain amount of years, and after that still having a percentage of the team, or ability to be the majority owner.

He screwed up by opening his fat yap and acting as an owner already.

Bugg, did a member of the Wilpon family abuse you as a young child, because you certainly have a hard-on for them.

They borrowed $420 million backed with NY state bonds to build Citifield, so the interest of $26 million is the annualized payment which led to these MLB and Chase loans .That doesn't include close to haf a billion the City and State kicked in at no cost to the Wilpons for infrastructure and improvements. And it doesn't include whate ver liability they will owe when the Madoff mess is settled.

They are chilelers and thieves. They stole taxpayer money to build their stadium. And they are hanging onto this team like cold death and running it into the ground out of ego. I am a Yankees fan, but they are a disgrace. If they had a shred of decency they would sell. But they won't. Arguabley they are way worse and more fiscally dangerous than Frank McCourt was. MCCouirt had a deal all set with Fox to sell them back a chunk of the Dodgers, and Selig instead took the franchise. And they are being cut slack because they are pals with Selig.

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They borrowed $420 million backed with NY state bonds to build Citifield, so the interest of $26 million is the annualized payment which led to these MLB and Chase loans .That doesn't include close to haf a billion the City and State kicked in at no cost to the Wilpons for infrastructure and improvements. And it doesn't include whate ver liability they will owe when the Madoff mess is settled.

They are chilelers and thieves. They stole taxpayer money to build their stadium. And they are hanging onto this team like cold death and running it into the ground out of ego. I am a Yankees fan, but they are a disgrace. If they had a shred of decency they would sell. But they won't. Arguabley they are way worse and more fiscally dangerous than Frank McCourt was. MCCouirt had a deal all set with Fox to sell them back a chunk of the Dodgers, and Selig instead took the franchise. And they are being cut slack because they are pals with Selig.

Billionaires leverage themselves heavily in debt. It happens everywhere. Doesn't mean I like it, and I certainly don't want my team operating on the cheap, but there is nothing unethical or illegal about borrowing money (as long as you have intent to pay).

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Ruh roh-MLB is not happy-

John Harper in today's Daily News-

MLB is banking on Mets woes and may jump to take control as Wilpons will soon feel the financial squeeze

Source says cash crisis on club may go beyond control of Bud & Co.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

On the day after word was leaked of the Mets taking out yet another loan, here is what you heard Tuesday from Major League Baseball officials: The walls are closing in on the Wilpons.

Nobody was saying that Bud Selig is ready to give the Mets owners the Frank McCourt treatment, and start chasing them toward the door. But neither was there any mistaking the growing concern from inside the MLB offices about the state of the franchise.

“They have a lot of things coming due,” was the way one MLB official put it. “They need some things to happen fairly soon.”

The official went on to explain that the banks, more so than MLB, are likely to start squeezing the Wilpons.

“They’re sort of at the end here with the banks and everything else,” the official said.

Suffice to say there is now a level of pessimism among MLB people about whether the Wilpons are going to survive their financial problems, which have become more of a topic of conversation than ever since Sandy Alderson told the world last week the Mets recently lost $70 million unrelated to the ongoing Bernie Madoff matter.

Now word has been leaked of a $40 million loan the Mets received from Bank of America six weeks ago, on top of last year’s $25 million loan from MLB on which they were recently granted a deadline extension for repayment until March.

Finally, there was Alderson at the Mets’ annual Christmas party on Tuesday, admitting that Johan Santana may not be ready to open the season in April as he continues to rehab from his 2010 shoulder capsule surgery.

Happy Holidays, indeed.

More than ever, you have to ask where this is headed for the Wilpons and the ballclub. Even after losing Jose Reyes to the Marlins via free agency last week, Alderson has insisted the Mets aren’t embarking on a full-scale rebuilding project, even as they are reducing payroll by some $40 million for 2012.

Santana is their only hope to make such a notion less than laughable. If he could return to something approaching his former Cy Young Award-winning self, then perhaps the Mets could be a surprise team.

It’s not that Alderson ever declared that he was counting on Santana as a sure thing in 2012. He knows as well as anyone that it took Chien-Ming Wang essentially two years to recover from the same injury, that Mark Prior was never the same.

But to hear the Mets’ GM admit Santana may not be ready to start the season is particularly significant at the moment because it ties in to the financial picture that seems to become gloomier by the minute.

The Mets are trying to raise cash by selling $20 million shares in the ballclub, and they seem to believe that will at least allow them to continue doing business in the immediate future. Of course, should they have to pay any sort of significant amount in the clawback lawsuit seeking Madoff money, MLB officials are convinced that would be a death blow to the Wilpons.

Even if they survive the Madoff lawsuit, however, there is the matter of how they survive if they are losing $70 million a year. To an outsider that number sounds inflated, considering the Mets managed to draw 2.4 million in attendance last season at relatively high ticket prices.

MLB people on Tuesday, however, explained that they believe it’s possible the Mets are losing that much money per year because, as one person said, “the debt loan on that new stadium is tremendous.”

As the person explained it, the Wilpons were so heavily leveraged that they may well have projected they’d be drawing three million fans a year at the highest of prices — they’ve had to lower prices the last couple of years — and had no margin for error when everything went bad.

The problem now, of course, is that to increase revenues and get out of the red, they need to put a ballclub on the field that people want to come see. They also need to count on their farm system producing cheap talent, and there may be hope there in the likes of pitching prospects such as Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, and others.

But the reality is it will probably be another two years before that influx of home-grown talent can have a big impact on the ballclub — a timetable that would coincide with the contracts of Santana and Jason Bay, worth a combined $40-plus million a year, expiring.

Will the Wilpons still own the ballclub by then? Selig hasn’t pressured them the way he did McCourt to sell the Dodgers, but MLB people insist it’s not because of any personal relationship so much as the Wilpons have been considered good owners over the years who always put money back into their ballclub, as opposed to McCourt using hundreds of thousands in revenue to support a luxurious lifestyle for himself and the wife he has now divorced.

Any goodwill the Wilpons have built could run out fast, however.

MLB people aren’t saying the Wilpons can’t save themselves by selling all these $20 million shares in the ballclub. More than ever, however, they’re saying the Mets’ owners are running out of time.

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Good overview of the fiscal mess from a Mets fan site. Basic idea; the Mets are broke. The Wilpons have leveraged the poop not only of the Mets, but also their stake in SNY. it will not end well-

http://www.amazinave...e-mets-finances

In this case, I hope it doesn't. I don't care who the owners of the Mets are, as long as they are solvent and investing in the infrastructure of the team (players and scouting).

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  • 3 weeks later...

Wilpons have retained the bankruptcy specialist who arranged the Texas Rangers sale. Note that NOBODY has bought the $20 million shares) the Wilponzis thought they could sell. And what a great deal that was- give these chiseling fools a pile of money, get some cool tickets,trust the Wilpons to run things, and be quiet-GREAT DEAL!

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-mets-retain-financial-firm-article-1.1001734

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  • 2 weeks later...

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