Dodgers president promises no changes here after Mark Walters shock sale of Lakers
Hours after Wednesday’s bombshell news that Dodgers owner Mark Walter was selling his majority stake in the Lakers at a record $12.5 billion valuation, Dodgers team president Stan Kasten was adamant that no changes were coming within the Dodgers organization.Kasten also confirmed that Walter has no plans to sell the baseball team.“This is a Lakers story, it’s not really a Dodgers story,” Kasten told reporters on Wednesday afternoon, speaking from the field at Dodger Stadium while the team took batting practice.“It really has nothing to do with the Dodgers.
They’re completely separate.So there are no changes here … I think that pretty much is the whole story.”The actual story, of course, at least appears a bit more complicated.Walter’s sale of the Lakers to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Josh Kushner shocked the sports world, given Walter had just bought the team in a $10 billion transaction a little more than a year ago.It also came amid a federal probe into Walter’s business empire, with the Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly investigating how around $16 billion in loans from Walter-owned insurance companies ended up on the balance sheets of his TWG Global conglomerate (the group through which Walter bought the Lakers last June).Earlier Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that TWG Global had been seeking fresh capital to reduce the loans held by its insurance companies. In an exclusive interview with the California Post later in the afternoon, Iger also revealed that “it was suggested to us that maybe Mark Walter would be interested in selling his stake in the Lakers” –– though did not specify why.For many industry observers, it sparked speculation that Walter’s sudden sale of the Lakers, which came together in a matter of days this week, was related to the ongoing investigation into his businesses.Some wondered if the Dodgers might also be in danger of being sold.Kasten, however, disputed those notions, desc...