Tom Hicks is having a firesale of sports teams. He’s dumping his interests in Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers, the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars, and England’s Premier League’s Liverpool.
In his day job as a founder of private-equity giant HM Capital (formerly, and better known, as Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst) he has certainly spun off plenty of legal work. Most of the fund’s work goes to Weil Gotshal, Vinson & Elkins, and Cadwalader.
So it’s no surprise that he’s also turning to Weil Gotshal for help on the sale of some of his personal investments.
Details after the jump.
According to AmLaw Daily, the sale of the Rangers has been in the works for a little while, with the Stars and Liverpool only recently being added to the mix.
Weil Gotshal has gotten the mandate on all three deals, and it’s going to get interesting.
On the Rangers sale, creditors are already saying it’s a sweetheart dump job and they’re getting short shrift. It won’t be an easy fight, judging by the counsel on the other side.
One problem: Tom Hicks owes creditors more than $500 million, and those creditors aren’t satisfied with the terms of the Rangers sale, according to The New York Times and this story (subscription only) in the Sports Business Journal. JPMorgan Chase, represented by partners David Teh and Ronan Wicks of Latham & Watkins, is the agent bank behind the debt, but an ad hoc committee of various funds and debt holders represented by Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCoy’s Andrew LeBlanc, has taken control of the negotiating process with Hicks, according to sources familiar with the deal. LeBlanc declined to comment; Wicks and Teh have not responded to several requests for comment.
Those aren’t the only creditors with BigLaw counsel.
The league’s push for the Greenberg team isn’t sitting well with the Hicks creditors, who simply want the most money possible out of the deal, the sources say. Some on the creditors side have raised questions about whether Greenberg’s move to retain Foley & Lardner partner Mary K. Braza, longtime outside counsel to the league, has given Greenberg an unfair advantage in the deal talks, the sources say. Braza declined to comment when we reached her today. But sources outside the league tell us Braza signed a strict nondisclosure agreement early in the process that bars her from talking to MLB officials without permission from the Hicks side.
Even MLB has BigLaw on its side (there’s an issue about whether the sale of the team is at a loss so he can get a premium on a sale of some land near the stadium)
This is where Major League Baseball comes in. The league, represented by Jordan Yarett of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, has made it clear throughout the process that it prefers the Greenberg/Ryan bid, according to four sources familiar with the matter. Yarett, who has represented MLB in financing work before, declined to comment. A sale cannot take place without the league’s support; the league and three-quarters of individual team owners must approve any new owner, and buyers who get an early vote of confidence usually win out.
His ownership of Liverpool has been contentious, to say the least… fans hate him and his Wikipedia entry is currently defaced with the description that he “is a [sic] American businessman living in Dallas who has messed up Liverpool FC.” So that isn’t likely to be the easier deal Zach Lowe wishes on Weil and Hicks.
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