Walters

A few months after Mark Walter became the chairman and majority owner of the Dodgers, he was told a fan in one of Dodger Stadium’s upper decks was upset about a mix-up with his tickets.

On most days, that would be an issue for an usher to handle. Not on this day.

Walter and team president Stan Kasten decided to address the problem, climbing the narrow stairwell to the top level where they found the fan and listened to his complaint.

“Obviously the guy was floored just to see me, let alone to see Mark,” Kasten said. “Mark, he’s incredibly comfortable around people. Not just his peers, but average fans. Because he considers himself an average fan.”

The Dodgers’ billionaire owner, hardly an average fan, is under intense scrutiny these days, following the sale of his controlling interest in the Lakers and a federal investigation into his business dealings. The drama has come as a surprise to some who know Walter, who has earned respect for his financial acumen and, despite his purchases of high-profile sports teams, has tended to dodge publicity.

He put together the ownership group that bought the Dodgers in 2012. Since the purchase, the team has played in five World Series, winning three, and finished first in the National League West 12 times in 14 seasons. It’s the greatest sustained run of excellence in baseball in more than a generation.

Walter waves to the crowd during the Dodgers’ ring ceremony in March.

(Jessie Alcheh/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

If the Dodgers win a third straight World Series this fall, they will become the first team to three-peat this century. And much of the credit for that would go to Walter, who has funded a front office that consistently has outspent the rest of Major League Baseball, signing seven players to contracts worth more than $2 billion combined in the last six years alone.

Now Walter faces questions about his future owning the Dodgers. Last month, his companies became the focus of two federal inquiries and a Delaware insurance regulatory review.

He is helping pay off some of his companies’ loans and sold the Lakers at a record valuation of $12.5 billion, a deal Walter’s holding company, TWG Global, says was not forced by the inquiries. Still, the sale raised questions about whether he will sell his ownership stakes in other sports properties, including English soccer club Chelsea, the Cadillac Formula One racing team, the WNBA’s Sparks and the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

Walter declined to comment for this article.

Kasten insists Walter has no plans to divest from the Dodgers. “The sports portfolio is going to remain intact,” Kasten said. “It’s important to Mark. I can’t tell you how important the Dodgers are to him.”

Still, Kasten acknowledges the decision to sell the Lakers to former Disney chief executive Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner just 14 months after agreeing to buy the team “was not a planned thing,” either.

Walter hoists the World Series trophy next to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred last November.

(Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Like most of the middle-class kids in the class of 1978 at Jefferson High in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Walter worked in high school.

“He pumped gas and he played golf,” recalled Cathy Boland Polito, Walter’s date for the senior prom who is now a retired medical technologist living in Oro Valley, Ariz.

Walter hardly stood out in his graduating class of about 350 students. He was athletic but not a stud. He was a good student, especially in math, but not a nerd.

“He was friendly. He was nice,” Polito said. “Everybody sort of knew him.”

Walter talks with Dodgers president Stan Kasten during the playoffs last year. “I can’t tell you how important the Dodgers are to him,” Kasten says.

(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

Walter went to Creighton University , where he studied accounting and business while playing intramural sports and participating in the philosophy society. Three years later, he earned a law degree from Northwestern.

Walter met his wife, Kimbra, in Chicago, where they raised their daughter, Samantha.

After a decade split between a Chicago law firm and First Chicago Capital Markets, a financial services and securities brokerage, Walter founded an investment firm, Liberty Hampshire Co., in 1996. While there he met J. Todd Morley, who connected him with the Guggenheim family fortune. The introduction quickly led to the formation of Guggenheim Partners, an investment and advisory financial services firm that works with insurance services, among other assets, and one that has a Wall Street reputation for being low-key but aggressive.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic closed Guggenheim’s offices, the lobby of the firm’s Chicago headquarters on the 49th floor of the AT&T Center boasted one of Monet’s “Water Lilies” paintings, which hung behind the receptionist’s desk inside a glass case with an alarm. A Picasso brightened another office upstairs.

Walter with Guggenheim Baseball Management partners Peter Guber, left, Stan Kasten and Magic Johnson at Dodger Stadium in 2012 after the group bought the Dodgers for $2 billion.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

A company insider not authorized to speak publicly told The Times in 2012 that Walter was a disciplined, focused and careful investor.

“He is a guy with one of the great financial minds of our time,” the person said.

For Walter, 66, who grew up playing youth baseball about 50 miles from the Iowa cornfield that became Kevin Costner’s “Field of Dreams,” that financial success was all well and good. But the longtime Chicago Cubs season-ticket holder really was a die-hard baseball fan whose dream was to own a sports franchise.

Walter first explored a purchase of the Houston Astros, who eventually were sold to Houston businessman Jim Crane for $615 million ahead of the 2012 season. So Walter pivoted and formed Guggenheim Baseball Management, a group that included Kasten, Lakers Hall of Famer Magic Johnson, movie producer Peter Guber and investors Bobby Patton and Todd Boehly, to buy the Dodgers for $2.15 billion, a record at the time, in March 2012. Part of the money Walter invested in the deal came from the insurers he controlled, although that deal was vetted by state insurance regulators.

MLB engineered the sale of the Dodgers after previous owner Frank McCourt filed for bankruptcy.

“The market drove the price,” Walter told The Times after the sale closed, calling the investment “a multigenerational thing my daughter’s granddaughters will own.” Walter’s daughter, who grew up joining family trips to Los Angeles for Dodgers games, is a marketing manager at TWG Global.

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1. WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 02: U.S. President Joe Biden (C) holds the jersey given to him by Los Angeles Dodgers Chairman Mark Walter during an event with the 2020 World Series champions in the East Room of the White House on July 02, 2021 in Washington, DC. The Dodgers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays to win the championship series at the end of an abbreviated season due to the coronavirus. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) 2. WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 07: (L-R) Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Los Angeles Dodgers Owner and Chairman Mark Walter pose with a jersey presented to Trump as he hosts the 2024 World Series champions in the East Room of the White House on April 07, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees with a 7-6 victory in Game 5. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) (Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

Today, the team is the most lucrative in the sport and is on pace to become just the second this century to draw more than 4 million fans in consecutive seasons. The Dodgers could be sold for a valuation of $10 billion to $13 billion — at the higher end, three times as much as the record sale price for a major league team — an industry source told The Times on the condition of anonymity.

Through it all, Walter mostly has shunned attention. The exception is participating in on-field championship celebrations and joining the team for trips to the White House during the Trump and Biden administrations.

His smooth run was interrupted during the Dodgers’ run to the 2024 World Series when Walter suffered a stroke that kept him from the victory celebration. His recovery reportedly was arduous; Walter struggled to speak clearly for months and didn’t return to public view until the Dodgers’ season-opening series in Japan the following spring.

Walter didn’t publicly step down from any roles after the stroke, holding on to control of a vast portfolio. Since buying the Dodgers, he has invested in European soccer, women’s hockey and basketball, squash and auto racing. He also bought several historic buildings in the resort town of Crested Butte, Colo., where he and his philanthropist wife own a home. In 2013, the couple purchased the Wild Oak Plantation, a 17,000-acre wildlife preserve in northeast Florida, where the Walters now spend most of their time.

Kimbra has served on the boards of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, OneGoal nonprofit and Goodman Theatre and is active in the family’s charitable organization, TWF Causes, which focuses on social impact and conservation work, including owning or supporting several major conservation and private reserve properties in Africa.

The family has a limited political footprint, with Walter donating to the Democratic National Committee and the campaigns of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and then-Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel. The majority of their donations, however, run through their family foundation and the Dodgers Foundation.

“For us, my wife and I, and all of my partners believe that corporations have to be corporate citizens, and individuals who benefit from them, or who have built them, need to give back,” Walter told ESPN soon after buying the Dodgers. “You can’t take it with you, and you ought to do something philanthropic with it.”

But while he’s put money into charitable projects, he’s invested his heart and soul in the Dodgers, Kasten said.

“He cares deeply about it,” the Dodgers president said. “He’s living through every play, every out, every at-bat.”

However much longer Walter remains invested in the Dodgers — financially, at least — could come down to math.

Justice Department prosecutors, the Securities and Exchange Commission and a Delaware insurance regulator are investigating whether Walter funneled as much as $21 billion from the portfolios of two insurance companies he owns into private credit for loans to other companies he also controls while reporting just a fraction of the loans’ value. The Wall Street Journal and the Athletic reported Walter used billions of dollars of those insurance premiums to buy sports teams.

Such “related party transactions” are legal, within limits, but are required to be reported to guard against conflicts of interest and to protect clients.

In Walter’s case, the related-party loans f initially were reported at between $1 billion and $1.4 billion when the true total actually was between $16 billion and $21 billion. The reclassification meant the affiliated investments jumped from 2% of one insurer’s portfolio to about 40%, according to Fitch Ratings.

No formal charges have been filed, and TWG Global, the multinational holding company led by Walter, is cooperating in the investigation. Walter has declined to be interviewed or to respond to written questions about the investigation, but his representatives have strongly denied any improper behavior, describing reports of the probe as “substantial speculation and misinformation” advanced by “unnamed sources and self-serving interests.”

“It does not inspire confidence to know that this kind of wild understatement happened,” said Andrew Granato, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in corporate finance and insurance. “It also doesn’t inspire very much confidence in the system of insurance regulation we have, that there could be this big of a mess that was not caught for years.”

Walter hired veteran Goldman Sachs lawyer David Markowitz to be his chief legal officer and reportedly is exploring the sale of his 12.8% stake in the Chelsea soccer club to Clearlake Capital, a Santa Monica-based private-equity firm whose Puerto Rican-born co-founder, José E. Feliciano, recently bought the San Diego Padres.

A source close to Walter not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times he has an interest in selling Chelsea if the terms are right but insisted there is no desire to sell the Sparks, the PWHL, his investment in professional squash or, more prominently, his stake in the Dodgers.

While Kasten and TWG Global officials insist the Dodgers aren’t for sale, uncertainty likely will linger at least until all investigations are completed.

Times staff writer Mirjam Swanson contributed to this report.

TWG Global — the holding company of Dodgers owner Mark Walter — rejected allegations of financial impropriety in the purchase and operation of the Dodgers and reiterated the team is not for sale.

At a time insurance regulators and federal investigators are looking into allegations that insurance companies under Walter’s umbrella did not properly disclose and conduct transactions between other companies he controls, and after Walter sold his controlling interest in the Lakers at a record $12.5 billion valuation, potential bidders have monitored whether the Dodgers might be sold as well.

In a statement Tuesday, TWG Global decried “multipronged attacks against TWG … by unnamed sources with self-serving interests” and said no insurance policyholder has been hurt as a result of the company’s financial transactions.

“There is no victim here,” the statement said. “No one has been harmed, and no one has claimed they were harmed.”

In 2012, when Walter and his partners bought the Dodgers for $2 billion, The Times reported the use of $1.2 million from Guggenheim Partners insurance funds into the deal. At the time, rival bidders expressed concern over the unusual financing, but state insurance regulators cleared the deal and Major League Baseball approved it.

“The transaction was subject to a full investigation conducted by an outside law firm on behalf of insurance regulators from multiple states,” the statement said, “which identified no irregularities and resulted in no further action.”

Even with the Dodgers issuing over a billion dollars in deferred contracts and amid whatever transactions might have been conducted between TWG-related insurance companies and the Dodgers’ affiliates — including ones that hold the team’s television rights and ticket revenues — the Dodgers’ ability to fund player contracts is not at risk, according to the statement.

“The Dodgers have the highest revenue in baseball, and it significantly exceeds the team’s obligations to its players,” the statement said.

The statement reiterated that, as Dodgers president Stan Kasten has said, “the team is not being sold and no sale process has been initiated.”

The Dodgers, if sold, could likely command a price in the range of $10 million to $13 million, industry analysts have told The Times.

The Lakers sold at a record price for a North American sports franchise, although industry analysts have said a competitive bidding process likely would have resulted in an even higher sale price.

Said the statement: “Mr. Walter was approached by Josh Kushner and his team about this transaction and the agreement represents a 25% premium to the price paid by Mr. Walter less than a year ago (and an even higher premium to the $5.0 billion valuation Mr. Walter paid in 2021) — hardly a ‘fire sale.’”

The statement added: “TWG is not looking to sell its sports assets at ‘fire sale’ prices to raise capital for its insurance operations.”

TWG said it is “working cooperatively and in partnership with the Delaware Department of Insurance” to resolve the regulatory issues and “is committed to working with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve their inquiries.”

“TWG stands firmly behind the integrity of its business,” the statement read. “Despite what has been reported, there has been no fraud.”

When the news broke last week that Mark Walter was selling the Lakers just one year after buying the storied basketball franchise, executives working for another crown jewel in his sports empire — the Dodgers — were quick to say the billionaire had no plans to sell the team.

The Dodgers have won three of the last six World Series and 12 division titles since an ownership group led by Walter bought the then-bankrupt team in 2012, and the Dodgers now are considered the most successful — and lucrative — franchise in Major League Baseball.

Yet, amid Walter’s financial difficulties, including a federal inquiry into his insurance empire regarding $16 billion to $21 billion in undisclosed loans to his own companies, questions remain over whether the blowback will hit the Dodgers.

Walter has denied wrongdoing, and sports business experts say it’s far too soon to know whether the Dodgers will be in play. No charges have been filed against Walter or anyone associated with his businesses.

“If you’re judging on that — winning and revenue created — he’s been at the helm of all of that. … He does truly look like a white knight as it relates to his ownership of the Dodgers,” said Patrick Rishe, executive director of the Sports Business Program at Washington University in St. Louis. Still, “we don’t know what the issues are, and we don’t know the severity and the magnitude.”

Aside from the Lakers, the Dodgers are, by far, the most valuable of Walter’s handful of sports franchises, and industry sources not authorized to speak publicly about any potential sale told The Times that the team could fetch $10 billion to $13 billion.

Walter’s sports portfolio includes the Los Angeles Sparks of the Women’s National Basketball Assn.; the Cadillac Formula 1 racing team; a premier women’s tennis competition, the Billie Jean King Cup; and the entire Professional Women’s Hockey League. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates Walter has a net worth of $18.3 billion.

There have been reports that he is putting his shares of his most valuable professional soccer franchise, the Chelsea Football Club of the English Premier League, on the market.

But the Dodgers are the greatest show in baseball, playing before stadiums packed with fans willing to shell out top dollar to see a roster that includes international superstars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Last week, Dodgers president and part-owner Stan Kasten said the Lakers sale “really has nothing to do with the Dodgers” and that “there are no changes here or contemplated here.” And Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said at a news conference that he was “shocked” by news of the Lakers sale and had not heard of any potential changes to Dodgers ownership.

Andrew Granato, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in corporate finance and insurance, said that although it was not yet clear whether Walter would offload the Dodgers, it would not be impossible, given the speed and scale of the billionaire’s recent financial transactions and the mounting federal and public scrutiny.

“I imagine that no fan feels particularly comfortable if the owner of their favorite team is under … investigation. Certainly, it’s not an ideal situation,” he said.

Walter was riding high after the Dodgers’ success and his $10-billion purchase of the Lakers last year. But the last few months have been challenging.

The loans by two Delaware life insurers that Walter owns were made to companies tied to him or his TWG Global holding company but were not disclosed as “related party” transactions as required, the Wall Street Journal reported. Related-party transactions made by insurers are required to be reported to limit conflicts of interest and protect policyholders, who have an interest in the financial strength of their insurers.

Walter, the 66-year-old chief executive of Chicago investment firm Guggenheim Partners, led a group that included another Guggenheim executive and Magic Johnson in acquiring the Dodgers for $2.15 billion in 2012, then a record for an MLB team.

The Times has reported that he tapped the insurers he owned for financing, a deal that was later vetted by state insurance regulators.

However, the amount of related-party loans made by the two affiliated life insurers now under federal scrutiny is vastly more, amounting to 40% of the invested assets of Delaware Life as of Dec. 31, according to Fitch Ratings. The credit rating firm said that is the most of any North American life insurers it reviews.

It’s unclear where the money went, but the Wall Street Journal reported that billions were passed through a third party before being received by entities tied to Walter or his TWG Global holding company.

Last week, Walter stunned the sports world by selling a majority stake in the Lakers for $12.5 billion to former Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner, who is the brother of President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Walter has declined to comment on whether the sale was tied to the federal investigation.

The framework for a deal was consummated in a matter of days, Iger told interviewers last week. It still must be approved by the NBA Board of Governors, which meets in September.

Projecting an exact value for the Dodgers is difficult because MLB and its players union are engaged in contentious collective bargaining negotiations that many experts believe could result in a lockout when the current agreement expires in December.

Should a salary cap be agreed upon for the first time in MLB history, the valuation could jump to the high end, the source said. And about $1 billion of any sale would be subtracted to cover the Dodgers’ future commitments on deferred contracts.

The Dodgers’ massive local television deal with SportsNet LA directly elevates the franchise’s overall valuation.

Listing potential buyers should the Dodgers be for sale is challenging because the estimated value of the franchise is so much greater than almost any other MLB team. The record price for a sports franchise was the $12.5 billion for the Lakers.

Besides Kushner and Iger, those who have bid for teams aren’t in the $10-billion-plus ballpark. The San Diego Padres were sold last week for $3.9 billion to José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones.

Another question that has arisen as Walter’s financial troubles have garnered headlines is whether MLB would conduct its own investigation into Dodgers ownership or pressure the billionaire and his partners to sell the team.

“Any time there is any kind of public question about owners, they look into it,” former Dodgers president Bob Graziano told The Times. “I would guess, because there is a federal investigation going on, they’re not launching their own investigation, but they are going to wait to see what comes out of the federal investigation.”

No investigation of any kind into the matter has been announced by MLB.

MLB has never formally stripped an owner of a franchise or forced an outright sale through a vote of franchise owners. But the league forced Frank McCourt to sell the Dodgers in 2012 by exerting pressure and threatening a financial takeover or disciplinary action that would have stripped operational control.

When McCourt sold the team to Walter’s Guggenheim group, the franchise was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

When Guggenheim purchased the team in 2012, it outbid billionaire hedge fund manager Steven Cohen, who now owns the New York Mets. A group headed by former Yankees and Dodgers manager Joe Torre and L.A. developer Rick Caruso dropped out of the bidding ahead of Cohen. Additional bidders included media executive Leo Hindery, billionaire Tom Barrack, then-St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke and Jared Kushner.

Times staff writer Laurence Darmiento contributed to this report.

Paul Walter hits eight sixes in an unbeaten 80, as he helps Manchester Super Giants set Sunrisers Leeds 187 to win in their Hundred eliminator match, with a place in the final on the line.

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Strictly Come Dancing have announced Gavin and Stacey star Melanie Walters as the fifteenth star for this year’s series, completing the line-up

Strictly Come Dancing have announced Gavin and Stacey star Melanie Walters as the final celebrity for this year’s series.

The BBC show is back this September with 15 more celebrities taking to the dancefloor. Gavin and Stacey actress Melanie is the fifteenth and final name to be confirmed for the Latin and ballroom competition.

Speaking about joining the show, she said: “Performing in Pantomime for the last 15 years, my Strictly ‘fix’ has always been watching in a dressing room rather than my front room.

“This year I am completely thrilled and happy to swap my fairy wand for sequinned dance shoes. I just hope I don’t follow Cinderella and leave one on the Ballroom stairs. I cannot wait to take part in this absolutely iconic show, it’s so exciting. See you in September!”

Melanie completes this year’s celebrity lineup alongside Lacey Turner, Dani Dyer, Delta Goodrem, Chris Appleton, Cach Mercer, Will Best, Dame Sarah Storey, Jaime Winstone, Bethany Antonia, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Graeme Hall, Lawrence Robb, Tabby Stoecker, and John Nellis in the 2026 Strictly Come Dancing line-up.

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