https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/752236 ... s-dodgers/
Mark Walter’s insurance companies are shuffling billions of dollars in investments involving affiliated businesses amid a federal investigation, regulatory filings released Tuesday show.
The filings, which offer a window into the finance mogul’s sports and business empire, also revealed that a loan tied to the Los Angeles Dodgers has been paid off almost entirely.
Two of Walter’s companies — Delaware Life Insurance Company and its affiliate Clear Spring Life and Annuity — received grand jury subpoenas in February as part of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the company acknowledged. A parallel investigation is underway by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and SEC declined to comment.
Walter did not return calls seeking comment. He is moving to sell his controlling stake in the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and is reportedly in talks to offload his shares in the Premier League’s Chelsea FC.
Delaware Life and Clear Spring Life said investigators are looking at whether billions of dollars in investments by the companies involving businesses with ties to the insurers were improperly reported as being unaffiliated.
That distinction matters because investments with affiliated businesses are subject to greater regulatory scrutiny to protect policyholders and guard against conflicts of interest, said Andrew Granato, a legal economist and assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.
Granato said insurers’ affiliated investments can create conflicts because the same person effectively controls both sides of a transaction. That would allow the company owner to set favorable loan terms to their affiliated business or, if the borrowing company were to default, the same owner could decide whether to aggressively fight for repayment. Meanwhile, the loan is backed by policyholders unaware of the transaction, he said.
“The Mark Walter situation is that on steroids,” Granato said.
Delaware Life and Clear Spring Life said a subsequent internal investigation identified errors in how related business investments were presented in the companies’ 2025 annual statements. For example, the filings show Delaware Life revised its disclosures to identify nearly $17 billion more in investments tied to related businesses, increasing its share of the company’s portfolio from about 3 percent to 42 percent.
The global credit rating agency Fitch Ratings said that is the highest exposure to affiliated investments among all of the life insurance companies it rates in North America.
“Fitch recognizes that affiliated investments vary widely but scrutinizes them more closely than other asset holdings, given the higher risk of conflicts of interest, illiquidity and lack of transparency,” Fitch Ratings wrote in July after placing Delaware Life on its negative watch list.
Similarly, S&P Global Ratings last month changed its outlook for Delaware Life from “stable” to “negative.” S&P at the time also affirmed its A-minus financial strength rating for the company.
The filings released Tuesday show Delaware Life taking steps to reduce exposure.
The insurer reported plans to sell $6.5 billion in assets tied to companies affiliated with Walter’s massive business empire to another Walter-controlled company, TWG Global. In exchange, Delaware Life will receive an equal amount from TWG Global in unaffiliated investments, the latest filing said. The transaction requires regulatory approval, Delaware Life noted in its filing.
The loan with Dodger Tickets LLC, a subsidiary tied to the Dodgers and involved with ticketing and other business operations, offers a look at the ties between investments.
In its annual filing for 2025, Delaware Life reported that Dodger Tickets was an unaffiliated business, despite Walter’s controlling ownership stake in the team.
The March regulatory filings reclassified Dodger Tickets as being affiliated. In the most recent filing released Tuesday, Delaware Life reported that the $4.1 million loan was nearly paid off in April. One dollar was listed as the balance in the June filing released Tuesday.
Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten, who was listed as CEO of Dodger Tickets in an April 2025 business filing with California’s Secretary of State, declined to comment on the organization’s corporate entities.
Kasten, however, maintained that the sale of the Lakers is not related to the Dodgers and changes are not coming to the MLB organization.
Group 1001, the Walter-controlled holding company that owns Delaware Life and Clear Spring Life, said last month in a statement to The Athletic that it was “cooperating fully” with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and SEC investigations and its policy was not to comment on pending governmental inquiries. Group 1001 also said it plans to “reduce and restructure certain of the investments at issue” in response to the errors, though it did not specify which investments.
“Our capital position and liquidity remain strong, and our financial strength ratings are unchanged,” the statement said. “We remain focused on delivering exceptional value and service to our contract and policyholders and their financial representatives.”
Walter serves as CEO of Guggenheim Partners and TWG Global, a holding company with investments across industries, including sports, entertainment, technology and artificial intelligence. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates Walter’s net worth at $18.3 billion, and his sports portfolio includes Chelsea FC, the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, the Professional Women’s Hockey League, Cadillac F1 and the Billie Jean King Cup, in addition to the Dodgers and, until last week, the Lakers.
Walter agreed to sell the Lakers to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The deal reportedly valued the Lakers at $12.5 billion — $2.5 billion more than when Walter agreed to purchase the team last year.
Granato said the regulatory filings and Lakers sale appear to show Walter is concerned about the fallout of the federal scrutiny.
“Mark Walter right now is making huge transactions at speeds that are incredibly dramatic,” he said.
