walter

Mark Walter isn’t selling the Dodgers, right?

He is selling the Lakers. He is selling his share of Chelsea, the Premier League team. He is looking into selling the Sparks.

And now he is looking into selling his share of the Cadillac Formula One racing team, as Sportico first reported Monday.

But keeping the Dodgers, right? “No matter what,” Walter told the California Post last week.

Wait a second, though. In August, Walter’s TWG Global holding company issued a statement that was definitive in two specific aspects: the Dodgers were “not being sold” and his company was “not considering exiting its stake in the Cadillac Formula 1 team.”

So I reached out to Walter’s company and to his personal spokesman, asking how to reconcile the definitive statement denying interest in a Formula One sale with the news of a possible sale and, in light of that development, whether the denials of interest in a Dodgers sale should remain credible.

No one at the company emailed me back, and the spokesman declined to comment. Someone in contact with Walter, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to comment, advised me to wait and see if a Formula One deal actually materializes and, if so, for what value.

Amid federal investigations into whether the insurance companies Walter controls might have violated laws designed to protect investors, and as he is a defendant in multiple civil lawsuits filed by investors that allege fraud and breach of contract, Walter is selling off assets from his sports empire.

He could generate a significant share of the more than $20 billion he might need to recapitalize the insurance companies and satisfy state regulators. It is uncertain how that might influence the federal investigations and civil lawsuits.

The Lakers sold for $12.5 billion — the valuation for the entire team, not for Walter’s controlling share.

Walter is seeking $3 billion for his interest in the Formula One team, according to Sportico, and $700 million for the Sparks, according to Bloomberg. The sale of the Chelsea stake, owned jointly by Walter and Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly, generated about $1.27 billion, according to the Financial Times.

The sale of the Dodgers could generate $10 billion to $13 billion, The Times has reported.

None of this is to say Walter is not genuine in his proclamation that he is not selling the Dodgers. He said the Dodgers would win, and they have: three championships within six years, after three in the previous 56. The shine has been restored to an L.A. crown jewel.

But things can change. Potential Dodgers bidders, including Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, are considering offers should Walter decide to sell. Some have inquired discreetly and been told what everyone has been told: the team is not for sale. Commissioner Rob Manfred said the league is keeping an eye on developments surrounding Walter’s insurance empire.

“As always when we have an investigation — external, law enforcement, whatever — we monitor that,” Manfred said at the World Series. “That’s where we are right now. We’re just watching what’s going on right now.”

And that is indeed where we are right now: We don’t know what’s going to happen with the feds, and in the courts. For today, and for the immediate future, the Dodgers are not for sale. But plans can change, as Walter’s Formula One team just learned.

Mark Walter is looking to sell the WNBA’s Sparks, taking another step in the dismantling of his sports-team empire, according to people familiar with the matter.

Walter, a co-founder of money management firm Guggenheim Partners, sold the Lakers earlier this year at a $12.5 billion valuation to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger, but the WNBA team had remained under his ownership. Kushner and Iger later discussed acquiring the Sparks, but they are not among potential buyers, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the talks are private.

Sportico values the team at $400 million. Walter is looking to sell the franchise and a related practice facility for more than $700 million, said one of the people, who wasn’t authorized to speak discussing private dealings. The practice facility, which was constructed for $150 million, is scheduled to open before the start of the 2027 season. The franchise plays in the Crypto.com Arena.

Such a deal would be by far the largest WNBA franchise sale in history. The current record of $300 million is held by Tilman Fertitta, the owner of the Houston Rockets who bought the Connecticut Sun and is in the midst of moving the franchise to Houston.

A spokesperson for Iger and Kushner declined to comment. A spokesperson for TWG Global, Walter’s holding company, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Federal prosecutors have been probing dealings at Walter’s insurance firms, prompting him to reshape his holdings and stirring up deal talks on multiple fronts, including his sports franchises. After selling the Lakers, he sold his stake in Chelsea FC to Clearlake Capital. Walter’s other sports holdings include the Dodgers, the Cadillac Formula One team and the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

Dodgers President Stan Kasten told The Times in August that the team isn’t for sale. “There’s no process that has been started to sell it, period,” he said.

The Sparks finished 16-28 during the WNBA season and have missed the playoffs for six straight seasons. The Sparks were one of the original eight teams when the WNBA was founded in 1997.

Williams, Natarajan and Shaw write for Bloomberg.

In February, after getting served with subpoenas in a federal criminal investigation, the billionaire sports mogul Mark Walter’s insurance companies abruptly stopped lending to him.

But within weeks, new loans started rolling in from a different source: a financial firm whose owners include his business protege, basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

Amistad Financial Group, a holding company that counts Johnson as a board member and minority shareholder, loaned about $1.26 billion to Walter’s companies between March and June of this year, according to a Bloomberg News review of business records and a person with knowledge of the activity who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters. Another $1.06 billion went to intermediaries that routinely serve as conduits for loans to Walter.

The combined $2.31 billion of lending, which hasn’t been reported previously, highlights the way Walter relies on debt to fund his business empire, and Amistad’s role. Even before this year, the firm’s insurance units had provided billions of dollars of loans to Walter affiliates, filings show. It also acted as an intermediary to help him tap loans from his own insurers, Bloomberg reported previously – transactions that are now part of the federal investigation.

Walter himself owns a single-digit voting stake in Amistad but doesn’t control it, participate in its management or sit on its board, according to a person familiar with its operations.

Representatives for Walter’s TWG Global holding company and for Johnson did not respond to messages seeking comment.

A former point guard who led the Los Angeles Lakers to five National Basketball Association championships, Johnson has described Walter as a business mentor. They have done deals with each other for more than a decade, including Johnson’s participation in the Walter-led purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. Johnson doesn’t serve on Amistad’s three-person executive committee, and it’s unclear whether he was involved in or aware of the lending decisions. Some of Amistad’s insurance units are led by Eric Holoman, Johnson’s former business manager.

The federal investigation, being pursued in parallel by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, focuses on Walter’s insurance companies’ failure to disclose that more than $20 billion of loans on their books went to his other businesses.

The recent lending came from two Amistad subsidiaries, Equitrust Life Insurance Co. and Heritage Life Insurance Co. It’s unclear whether Amistad executives were aware of the investigation when the loans were made. Walter’s insurers disclosed the subpoena in a regulatory filing on June 26, but the filing did not get much attention until Bloomberg News reported on it in July. Information about lending activity after June 30 won’t be disclosed until next month.

Walter is now scrambling to reduce debts to his own insurance companies, Delaware Life Insurance Co. and Clear Spring Life and Annuity Co., in part to assuage concerns from ratings agencies about the scale of affiliated lending. He has agreed to sell the Lakers at a $12.5 billion valuation to free up cash and proposed a $6.5 billion debt swap with Delaware Life. This week, the insurer said it had regulatory approval to proceed with part of that, swapping $3.8 billion.

Because he doesn’t legally control Amistad, Walter is under no such pressure to reduce his reliance on its money.

His ties to Amistad are deep. Its official corporate address is the Chicago office suite that houses Walter’s family office. Walter’s financial firm, Guggenheim Partners, serves as an investment manager for both Equitrust and Heritage Life.

Walter’s brother-in-law serves as president of Heritage Life. Walter used to control Equitrust when it was owned by Guggenheim. He sold it to Johnson in 2015, and Johnson sold it to Amistad last year.

Recipients of the new Amistad loans include a company through which Walter holds his stake in used-car seller Carvana Co., and another containing his interest in the Billie Jean King Cup, the women’s tennis competition that he has backed since 2023. The destination for most of the money wasn’t clear from regulatory filings.

New LLCs

The federal investigations revolve around how Walter’s insurers came to lend so much money to his other businesses without disclosing the arrangement to their regulator, the Delaware Department of Insurance, as required. As of the end of last year, the amount of money they had invested in affiliates was $24 billion, or about 45% of the companies’ total invested assets.

Much of the money was routed to loans for newly created limited liability companies with no public profile. These LLCs were created by Amistad and other intermediaries, which in turn sent the money back to Walter.

In January and early February of this year, that lending arrangement continued, with Delaware Life loaning $730 million to newly formed LLCs that then sent the money to Walter’s other businesses, regulatory filings show. That stopped after the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan sent the grand jury subpoenas.

But in March, Amistad’s Equitrust sent $500 million to 10 LLCs. These borrowers had been formed days earlier by Federico Hermida, a Miami-based executive at ABS Capital Co., a longtime business partner of Walter’s that has often served as an intermediary in deals between Walter and his insurers. In June, Amistad’s Heritage Life sent $303 million to a subset of the Hermida borrowers. A representative of ABS declined to comment.

Heritage Life also sent about $253 million to LLCs set up by two other intermediaries that Walter has used for loans in the past: the real estate firm Bradford Allen and Hudson Trading, both based in Chicago. Representatives of Bradford Allen didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Hudson Trading declined to comment.

The remaining $1.3 billion of loans were made to companies that are known to be part of Walter’s business empire, or that were formed by a Walter employee, or were confirmed by the person with knowledge of the matter.

Most of the loans carried interest rates of 8 percent or more, and were due to mature in September or earlier. The insurers won’t have to disclose whether those loans were repaid, extended or replaced with new debt until they file their next quarterly financial reports next month.

Despite the borrowing from Amistad, Walter had not significantly reduced his debt to his own insurance companies by June 30, the date of the most recent regulatory filings. After climbing from $24 billion to $25 billion through March, the amount of affiliated investments dropped to about $24 billion as of June.

Mider and Li write for Bloomberg.

What we know: The Dodgers lost. Their season is no more. Their three-peat dream has been dashed. Their winter is upon us.

What we don’t know: What the future holds, in what could be a turbulent winter for the Dodgers and for all of Major League Baseball.

Here are four things we don’t know about the Dodgers, but well worth keeping an eye on:

Shohei Ohtani

Just three short months ago, we wondered whether Ohtani would win his fifth most valuable player award and his first Cy Young Award. Has the time come for the Dodgers to consider curtailing his pitching?

As the Dodgers trudged through the playoffs, we endured daily drama over where in the lineup Ohtani would bat (first, second, fourth, fifth or sixth) and what he could produce despite playing through multiple injuries.

We’ll soon get a better understanding of those injuries, and whether rest, rehabilitation and/or surgery might be recommended for each one. We’ll also get a better sense of what the future might hold for Ohtani as a two-way player, and for his potential to perform at an elite level on both sides of the ball.

Ohtani said he plans to resume pitching next year. He is 32. He just completed his 14th professional season.

Ohtani has pitched more than 132 innings once since 2016, when he was 22 and playing for the Nippon Ham Fighters.

In his three seasons with the Dodgers, this was the first that did not involve rehabilitation from elbow surgery. He started 14 games before a knee injury prevented him from pitching any more this season.

Payroll

Dodgers pitcher Tarik Skubal walks off the field during Game 1 of the NLDS.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Major league owners are poised to shut down the sport this winter, in pursuit of a salary cap designed to restrain the Dodgers, since they won’t restrain themselves.

The owners’ initial proposal set a salary cap of $245 million next year. The Dodgers already have $347 million committed to 14 players next year, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

Under a cap, the owners have promised a transition period to account for existing commitments, and an actual negotiated cap could be higher.

Even if the players do not agree to a cap — and they insist they won’t — whatever economic system that would emerge from collective bargaining would be almost certain to make it painful for the Dodgers to spend so freely.

Whatever the case, the Dodgers could face the kind of difficult roster choices they often have papered over with money this decade. Two closers for $141 million? Good luck with that.

And would they be able to fit soon-to-be free agent Tarik Skubal into their payroll? Skubal might well sign before the lockout is expected to start in December, but there is nothing agent Scott Boras loves more than pitching a marquee free agent to a new owner. The two other Southern California teams — the Angels and San Diego Padres — both have one.

Age

Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, left, and general manager Brandon Gomes have decisions to make about their aging roster.

(Luke Hales / Getty Images)

When Andrew Friedman made his name as the general manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, he did it in large part by taking advantage of one market inefficiency within the American League East: He beat up on the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees because they were stuck with rosters crowded with aging stars on big contracts. The Rays couldn’t have done that even if Friedman had wanted to.

He didn’t want to do it too much in Los Angeles, because it compromises roster flexibility. But, after seven National League West titles and no World Series championships, ownership went all in: Mookie Betts (12 years, $365 million), Freddie Freeman (six years, $162 million), Ohtani (10 years, $700 million), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12 years, $325 million), Tyler Glasnow (five years, $137 million), Blake Snell (five years, $182 million), Will Smith (10 years, $140 million) and Kyle Tucker (four years, $240 million).

It worked: three rings in six years. Now the bill comes due.

The Dodgers fielded the oldest group of position players in the major leagues this season. Ohtani and Betts are under contract through their age-39 seasons; Smith will be 38 when his deal’s up, Yamamoto and Max Muncy 37, Snell 36, Glasnow 35.

Something to watch this winter: Freeman is 37, signed through next year. He would like to play until 40 and finish his career here. That would take a two-year extension. Would the Dodgers say no?

Ownership

Mark Walter’s insurance empire is under investigation by federal authorities — and the subject of discussions with state regulators — over allegations the businesses he controls failed to properly follow laws designed to protect investors.

Walter’s company has denied wrongdoing, and neither Walter nor his businesses have been charged with a crime. He is, however, a defendant in multiple civil lawsuits in which insurance policyholders claim he and several of his companies committed fraud and breach of contract.

Walter may need more than $20 billion to satisfy regulators by recapitalizing insurance companies. He abruptly sold the Lakers in August, in a deal that valued the team — not just Walter’s controlling interest — at $12.5 billion. He and fellow Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly also sold a small stake in English soccer club Chelsea FC last month for about $1.27 billion, the Financial Times reported. It is uncertain how Walter would provide the rest of the money for recapitalization.

“Regarding the Los Angeles Dodgers, to be clear, the team is not being sold,” Walter’s holdings company said in a statement last month.

It is uncertain whether a resolution with insurance regulators would satisfy the Department of Justice, which reports to President Trump. In July, when the Dodgers visited the White House, Walter presented Trump with an official World Series championship ring with his name engraved on it. He also sold the Lakers to former Disney chief Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law.

Major League Baseball is monitoring the situation and could conduct its own review after the state and federal matters are concluded.

AARON Paul has paid tribute to RJ Mitte saying he has been left “heartbroken” after the Breaking Bad star died, aged 34.

Mitte, who famously played Walter White Jr in the Emmy Award-winning show, tragically died on Monday in Brownsville, Texas.

Paul – Mitte’s Breaking Bad co-star who played Jesse Pinkman – told The Hollywood Reporter: “I am at a loss. I am heartbroken over this news.

“RJ, I love you my friend. You will be missed. And to whoever happens to be reading this, please know you are loved, and you are not alone. Always remember that.”

Dean Norris, who also played alongside Mitte as his on-screen uncle Hank Schrader also paid tribute, saying: “Though RJ didn’t play my TV son, I always looked out for him as a young kid on set.

“He was a sweetheart of a young man and will be greatly missed. This is so heartbreaking, I can’t believe it. Thinking of him and his family.”

Read more in The U.S. Sun

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Mitte’s representative confirmed to TMZ on Monday that Mitte had tragically passed away in Texas.

They said: “It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of beloved actor, philanthropist, and passionate disability rights advocate RJ Mitte.

“RJ Mitte was best known for his role as Walter ‘Flynn’ White Jr on AMC’s critically acclaimed, award-winning series Breaking Bad. 

“Drawing from his own experience living with cerebral palsy, Mitte brought authenticity to the role and built a platform on disability awareness and inclusion.”

His cause of death was not immediately disclosed, however, the outlet reported that he died by suicide.

Mitte was born on August 21, 1992, in Jackson, Mississippi, and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at just three-years-old.

But he used his stardom as a Hollywood actor to become a leading disability rights advocate.

He spent most of his childhood using crutches, but improved his ability to walk over his teenage years through sports and exercise.

Just months before his death, Mitte told young people who also live with the condition to “never give up”.

He told Future of Personal Health: “My hope is to inspire a ‘never give up’ mentality.

“If there is something you want in life, pursue it no matter how hard it may be. Keep your dreams alive. Don’t lose sight of who you want to become.”

Off the set, Mitte served as a celebrity ambassador for several organizations, including United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Children’s.

He was also the president of his own charity – The Mitte Foundation – which supported philanthropic efforts and community initiatives, challenging stereotypes around people with disabilities.

Breaking Bad – often credited as one of the best TV series of all time – aired on AMC for five seasons between 2008 and 2013, earning a staggering 58 Primetime Emmy nominations.

Mitte was cast in the leading role of Walter “Flynn” White Jr in 2008 at the age of 15, going on to star in 56 episodes of the hit crime drama.

He played the son of Bryan Cranston and Anna Gunn’s characters – Walter and Skyler White – and his character also had cerebral palsy, as Mitte drew on his own experience for the part.

A week before his sudden death, Mitte appeared on the Joe Vulpis Podcast, where he spoke about his early days in acting and his time on the show.

He called auditioning for Walt Jr “one of the longest auditions of my life”, saying he was one of the last characters to be cast in an audition process that took six months.

Mitte added: “It was me versus another individual at the time. An hour later, Vince called me and goes, ‘Hey, RJ, you got the part. Pack your bags. Go back to Los Angeles, and come back to set. You’re already late. We’re already filming. We need you here’.

“And that was history for me.”

Reacting to the news of Mitte’s death, Vulpis said on social media: “I had the honor of sitting down with RJ Mitte not too long ago and I can genuinely say he was such a kind, incredible, and gentle soul.

“My heart goes out to his family and loved ones, and I wish them peace and privacy during this difficult time.”

Mitte’s breakout role came after starting his career in entertainment as an extra in shows such as Everybody Hates Chris and Hannah Montana.

It opened up further opportunities with the TV star going on to feature in shows including Switched at Birth and Netflix’s animated series The Guardians of Justice.

He also appeared in several films including the drama “Triumph” from 2021, which he also executive produced.

Mitte’s final public appearance came just days before he tragically passed away as he smiled on the red carpet for the premier of his new movie – Talking to Strangers – on September 30 in California.

He was a Screen Actors Guild spokesman for actors with disabilities and in 2013, he received the SAG-AFTRA Harold Russell Award.

A year before his death, Mitte got engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Kennedy Suarez, in October 2025.

At the time, Mitte gushed about starting a life together with Suarez, telling People: “I’m thrilled to have found my person, my partner in life who makes me want to be better, no matter what we’re doing.

“Kennedy is my everything and I can’t wait to officially start our life together and see what adventures life takes us on next.”

If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.