Nolan Ryan Group Wins Texas Rangers
Hall of Fame pitcher and Texas Rangers President Nolan Ryan is leading an investment group won an unusual auction for the baseball team facing a 600 million dollars offer from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.Officials from the federal bankruptcy court announced the winning bidder 10 hours after the auction began. The Greenberg-Ryan group’s final offer was 385 million dollars in cash and though the arrangements for the transaction are already starting to be made the final approval of the Rangers sale rests with MLB, which chose to sell the team to the second highest bid. Bob DuPuy, the league president, says that he is very happy with Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan leading the Rangers baseball team for many years from now on. Mark Cuban decided that he will not make another bid after reaching a predetermined limit. He also wanted to buy the Chicago Cubs last year. Cuban’s group had made a 390 million dollars cash offer which is part of a 598 million dollars bid. Though, the Greenberg-Ryan bid was considered higher because of the structure of the bid, which include a 10 million dollars to 13 million dollars breakup fee which would have been paid to the Geenberg-Ryan group in case that they are not winning. Each group’s bid amount included more than 200 million dollars of the team’s debt and 24.9 million dollars compensation still owed to Alex Rodriguez six years after he was transferred to the New York Yankees team.
The first Greenberg-Ryan group bid was 365 million dollars and dropped provisions in the amount of 12 million dollars, which proved that they were still intending to fight for the team after trying to stop the auction here, compared to the 355 million dollars cash bid from Cuban and Jim Crane, the Houston businessman. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Russell Nelms kept the auction going and the Greenberg-Ryan group started biding again, reaching the amount of 520 million dollars. The auction started Wednesday afternoon and Rangers attorney Martin Sosland said that the Cuban’s group bid was 25 million dollars higher than the bid submitted by the Greenberg-Ryan group. Greenberg-Ryan offered later 2 million dollars more than Cuban’s group, which raised the total amount by 15 million dollars, so the total offer reached about 335 million dollars cash. This is the latest turn in one of the most arguable sales of an American professional sports team, after the last Major League Baseball team to be auctioned in this manner was the Baltimore Orioles in 1993. According to the team’s bankruptcy plan the creditors will get only about 75 million dollars, no matter who the final buyers will be. The judge says that the lenders can follow former team owner Tom Hicks other companies to retrieve the 525 million dollars that are still owed to them.11
