00:00Why has the DOJ been investigating? Let's just start with the fact that really kicked off a lot
00:03of these sales. I think just to take a quick step back, if you go this time last week, that
00:08was when
00:08the Lakers news broke that the Los Angeles Lakers were getting sold less than a year after Mark
00:13Walter took control of that team. And that's when a lot more questions came to the fore. And that
00:19takes us back to the news that Bloomberg has been on for a little bit longer than that, that Mark
00:23Walter and his business empire has been under federal scrutiny. We heard from his insurers that
00:30earlier this year they got subpoenas from the DOJ and they told us that the DOJ and the SEC is
00:36carrying out a parallel investigation to figure out how those insurers were making loans to other
00:43parts of Mark Walter's business without tagging them as related party, without tagging them as
00:49affiliated assets. You are allowed to make such loans, but your regulator needs to know
00:53because there are certain other hoops that you have to jump through. And when they redid the numbers, they
00:59reclassified almost $20 billion in loans. Their affiliated assets went from about 3% of the
01:05insurance balance sheet at one of the bigger insurance to 40%. Obviously, that's going to raise a lot of
01:10questions. And in the last week, we've seen the repercussions play through. The Lakers sale, it's now clear, was
01:15part of a bid to accelerate these efforts to try and pay down these loans, to try and restructure these
01:21loans so that
01:22they can clean up the insurance balance sheet. And that's why we've seen a flurry of deal activity and
01:28talks about a flurry of deal activity.
01:30And again, you've been joining me on Open Interest this week. It's like every single day there's something new
01:34that's that's being sold off. What about his relationship to Guggenheim and how that factors into all of this?
01:39Well, again, the Mark Walter business empire, the only reason we could keep calling it that sprawling business
01:45and buyers. He's atop this holding company that controls insurers, Delaware Life and ClearSpring, that
01:51controls key financial entities. Guggenheim partners, most notable on Wall Street for Guggenheim
01:56Investments, the $367 billion asset manager and Guggenheim Securities, the broker dealer run by the former
02:03Bairstone CEO, Alan Schwartz. In addition to that, he has a lot of merchant banking interests, investments in different
02:10spaces, whether it's related to AI, reviving the woolly mammoths and several other cutting edge technology
02:16investments. And on top of that, he's famous on Wall Street on Main Street for all the sports
02:21ownerships, the Dodgers, Lakers, Chelsea, Cadillac. The list goes on. All of the sports that you like, all of the
02:26sports
02:26where Mark Walter plays a key role.
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