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October 19, 2009
For Potential Owner, a Background Check Worthy of the K.G.B.
The NY Times
By Richard Sandomir
In order to approve the deal for billionaire Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov to purchase the NJ Nets from Bruce Ratner, the board of NBA owners will have to be willing to accept some ambiguity in the results of the financial/personal vetting process:
Mike Ackerman, a former C.I.A. senior operations officer who is the president of the Ackerman Group, a security firm, said the league would have to accept a certain amount of ambiguity in order to approve Prokhorov.
“When we vet Russian joint-venture partners for our clients, I tell them there is no black and white in Russia, it’s all gray,” he said. “Information can be had, but you have to be prepared to accept the grayness.”
Russian oligarchs are an unusual group of capitalists by Western standards.
...
The league’s investigation may never yield as complete a picture of Prokhorov as it would an American buyer. All the same, N.B.A. owners will have to decide whether the cash infusion for the Nets is worth taking a risk on a charismatic billionaire willing to bail out a franchise that has lost nearly $400 million in five years under Ratner. ...
Leagues do not reject many prospective buyers in a vote by owners. They prefer to eliminate those who fail to meet their requirements in early stages of consideration.
NoLandGrab: It's hard to believe that league commissioner David Stern would have publicly backed this deal if he wasn't confident that the owners would approve.
Posted by lumi at October 19, 2009 6:59 AM