Yesterday, Brandon Tierney and Tiki Barber alluded on their radio show Tiki and Tierney, the Wilpons were in discussions to sell the Mets. Today, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports minority owner Steve Cohen is currently in negotiations with the Sterling Partners to increase his investment in the New York Mets.
As reported by Reuters in 2012, Cohen purchased a four percent stake in the New York Mets organization for $20 million dollars. At the time, the Mets were divesting their total control of the team in the wake of the Madoff scandal. At no point in the process did Sterling lose majority interest in the Mets.
Recently, Sterling had gone through the process of re-acquiring some of the shares it had sold, but apparently, they did not obtain some of the smaller shares it had sold to people like Cohen and comedian Bill Maher.
At the moment, it is not known how much of a share Cohen will be purchasing from Sterling. The only currently known terms of the agreement are Fred Wilpon will remain the CEO and control person for five years, and Jeff Wilpon will remain as the COO for the same five year period.
According to Forbes, Cohen is the founder of Point72 Asset Management, and he is worth $13.2 billion. He had previously founded, ran, and eventually had to shut down SAC Capital due to insider trading charges which resulted in his paying $1.8 billion in penalties.
According to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, Cohen will not gain majority control of the team for another five years, and Bloomberg is reporting Cohen is acquiring 80% of the team with a $2.6 billion valuation. What this means for how the team is going to be operated for the next five years and whether the Mets will be able to spend more money this offseason is anyone’s best guess at the moment.
