Edited by: JV Staff
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio deflected questions Thursday about whether he wants to block the sale of the New York Mets to hedge fund manager Steve Cohen, as was reported by AP. The embattled mayor essentially asserted his control over the $2.475 billion deal to the 64-year-old Cohen who is the CEO and president of Point72 Asset Management.
AP reported that Major League Baseball owners are expected to vote Friday to approve the purchase of 95% of the Mets by Cohen. The current Mets ownership group is headed by Fred Wilpon, brother-in-law Saul Katz and Wilpon’s son Jeff. The Wilpon and Katz families would retain 5% of the team.
While not sharing his opinion on Cohen, DeBlasio also said that he would not be moved MLB’s Friday deadline.
The New York Post reported that in his daily news briefing on Thursday, DeBlasio said “It’s not appropriate to be commenting on the people involved. The Law Department is handling this. I’m not going to issue personal views in the middle of that kind of review.”
Asked twice by reporters whether he thought Cohen was a fit owner, De Blasio declined to comment, according to the AP report.
“When we’re in the middle of a legal review, which again is our fiduciary responsibility as a city to do this, it’s not appropriate to be commenting on the people involved,” the Democrat mayor said.
Asked about the proposed sale at a news briefing, de Blasio said the city law department is legally obligated to review the sale because Citi Field, where the Mets play, is on city land, according to the AP report.
“It’s our land,” said de Blasio, a Boston Red Sox fan. “There is a legal requirement that if there’s an ownership change it has to be evaluated. Our law department is doing that evaluation based on the law.”
AP reported that a provision in the city’s lease agreement says any new owner of the team cannot be someone who has been convicted of a felony or is an organized crime figure.
Cohen’s former company, SAC Capital Partners, pleaded guilty in an insider trading case in 2014 and paid $1.8 billion in fines. Cohen himself, though, was not charged in the case.
Asked twice by reporters whether he thought Cohen was a fit owner, De Blasio declined to comment.
De Blasio confirmed he had called baseball commissioner Rob Manfred to discuss the matter but declined to discuss the specifics of his phone call.
“I want to respect a private conversation,” de Blasio told reporters Thursday about the call, according to the Post report. “I reached out to Commissioner Manfred simply to let him know that we had this legal responsibility and we were pursuing it and doing due diligence.”
DeBlasio added that: “We understand MLB has their process but we have our process. It was just important to me to just let him know that we have a legal obligation and were going to fulfill it.”
Last week, AP reported that Cohen first bought into the Mets when the team sought $20 million in minority investment stakes following the collapse of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which heavily cost the Wilpons and their companies. The limited partnership shares were sold after a proposed $200 million sale of a stake of the Mets to hedge fund manager David Einhorn fell through in 2011.
