What is tarnished about Einhorn exactly?

If so, you’re missing the fact Lehman Brothers Company went bankrupt in 2008… not Einhorn

Mr. Einhorn stated, “Having an opportunity to become part of the Mets franchise is exciting beyond my wildest childhood dreams. I spent my first seven years living in New Jersey and rooting for the Mets. In 1975, I even dressed in a homemade jersey as a Met for Halloween. I have been a baseball fan for my entire life and have enjoyed teaching the game as the coach of my daughter’s little league team. I look forward to partnering with the Wilpon and Katz families through the good seasons, the tough seasons and especially the championship seasons”

with lehman, he made his money shorting the stock. This means that he felt it was priced way to high (and the company was little to fail, as it did), so he essentially bet on it going down (which is pretty much all shorting stock is). Of course, if the price had gone up and he had to cover his shorts (losing his real ones in the process), he would not be looking to buy a stake in this team.

1st, it is an undervalued asset right now (that is, it should be a cash cow, and likely will again in the future) that he can buy into on the relative cheap. Odds are that his stake will increase in value

2nd, he is stinking rich (off of paper shuffling, the american way!) and when you get to a certain point of richness, you need something to do with your money (a toy or hobby). And very few opportunities come up to own a NY MLB team. So even if he just breaks even, it is still cheaper than buying a private jet.

this goes for Fred too (from what he has said), but buying into a pro sports team for a rich guy is not the same as evaluating a widget company you might want to buy into. It is much more emotional.

and of course, with the mets, there is the real possibility that in the near future, if you want to, you will have the opportunity to take over majority control.

A little about Einhorn:
Starting July 2007, Einhorn became a short seller in Lehman Brothers stock. He believed that Lehman was under-capitalised, and had massive exposures to CDOs that were not written down properly. He also claimed that they used dubious accounting practices in their financial filings.

When Bear Stearns had to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve in March 2008, Lehman was widely considered to be in a fragile state. Lehman’s CFO was Erin Callan, hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “Lehman’s Straight Shooter”. But she had been on the job for just six months and her background was as a tax lawyer, not in finance.

In a speech at a conference in April, Einhorn started talking publicly about his Lehman short positions. Lehman called Greenlight and asked for a copy of the speech, which was sent over.

In May 2008, Lehman CFO Callan had a private call with Einhorn and his analysts. The conversation with Callan was to give her a chance to explain discrepancies he had uncovered between the firm’s latest financial filing and what had been discussed during its conference call about that filing.

Ms. Callan is said to have fumbled some of her responses to questions on Lehman’s asset valuations. When Einhorn later went public with the conversation, the declining Lehman share price took a further knock. Callan was fired a few weeks later, when Lehman reported a worse than expected $2.8bn second-quarter loss.

Lehman went bankrupt in September 2008.

You can also check out: http://www.foolingsomepeople.com/main/about-david/bio.html

Otherwise, this deal doesn’t make a lot of sense for him.

It will also be interesting to see how the money works going forward. If money has to get put into the team, it needs to be proportional from wilpons and the new guy.

makes no sense for Fred to sell off a % of the team, then put that money right back into paying off team debts. If that happened, the new guy would be double dipping.