Texas Rangers, Stars Owner Tom Hicks Defaults on $525 Million in Loans

[marmar]

Texas Rangers Owner Hicks Sports Group Misses Interest Payments
By Aaron Kuriloff


April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Tom Hicks’s holding company for the Texas Rangers baseball team defaulted on $525 million in loans after missing interest payments, Bloomberg data show.

Hicks Sports Group, which also owns the Dallas Stars hockey team, is involved in negotiations with its lenders over the terms and covenants of the loans, Hicks Sports said in an e- mailed statement. Describing the situation as a “business dispute,” the team owner decided to withhold last week’s interest payment “as part of its negotiations,” according to the statement.

“We are simply asking the lenders to be reasonable,” Tom Hicks, 63, said in the statement. “They need to understand that these important assets must be managed with long-term perspective and a commitment to winning.”

The company missed payment on a $350 million term loan with an interest rate of 2.5 percentage points above the London interbank offered rate, or Libor; a $100 million so-called second-lien loan, with an interest rate of 5.5 percentage points plus Libor; and a $75 million revolving bank loan that pays 2 percentage points over Libor.

“Like so many other companies and institutions, HSG has been impacted by a global credit crisis which no one could have anticipated,” Tom Hicks said. “The company is not asking for additional money; it is only asking for full access to the interest reserve account and revolving credit line as well as some amendments in the debt covenants.”

The loans were arranged by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Barclays Plc in 2006 and mature in 2010 and 2011, according to Bloomberg data. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601079&sid=auyBQFO0TL0k&refer=home

[leftofthedial]

1. until bushboy pissed of cheney,

they could have dealt with Hicks' problems with one phone call from the bunker.

[Ilsa]

2. Small borrowers get the crapped kicked out of them. Assholes

like the Hicks and Bushes suffer no embarrassment from stealing from the FDIC and taxpayers. Hicks and his family won't be giving up anything in light of their financial issues while the guy in south Dallas will have his car repo'ed and house foreclosed upon. I know, because I've seen it in banking before.

[Flying Dream Blues]

3. Sickening. nt

[glowing]

4. Chase is suing me over piddles compared to this asshole.. this is why we want the bankers

to burn.. this is why peace does not exist.. because assholes like that deserve the worst karmic luck.. hope he's hit by a train.

[old mark]

6. Won't happen, though - he hires people to be hit by trains

meant for him.

A lot of money insulates people from harsh realities, makes them think they actually deserve all they have and that they somehow earned it all...

Look at W for example.


mark

[gratuitous]

5. "Be reasonable . . . long-term perspective"

"A global credit crisis which no one could have anticipated."

Wow, is Hicks thinking about running for governor of Texas? He sure as the world sounds exactly like every asswipe factotum, appointed dumbshit official and general fuck-up inflicted on us for eight years by the Bush administration.