Orioles president and CEO John Angelos prefers to sell part of the club while retaining majority control of his familyGetty Images
Orioles president and CEO John Angelos wants to ‘retain control of the club through his family’, but the lawsuits that exposed the Angelos family’s ‘struggles for control and the future of the Orioles have also prepared selling the team, including hiring a law firm and an investment bank,” according to sources cited in a front-page story by BALTIMORE SUN’s Jeff Barker. ‘Angelos, Peter, owns a “clear majority of the shares”, but it is “not publicly known how much more than 51% is in his hands”. Any sale by the family is “less likely” as long as Peter is alive, as it would result in “high capital gains taxes”. A sale after his death “could save the family hundreds of millions of dollars”. But John prefers “to sell part of the Orioles while retaining majority control of his family”. Peter being ill, his wife Georgia “controls a fi ducie who owns her assets and she is effectively the owner of the team, having the same supervisory authority as Peter. But John’s preferences “matter because he is closely related to his mother and is also the ‘control person'” designated by MLB to make decisions for the Orioles. Sources said John would like to “diversify financially the family investments,” while “enhancing the diversity of the Orioles’ partnership with stakeholders from diverse sectors and from different breeds and races. Ethnic origins” (BALTIMORE SUN, 8/16).
FAMILY STRUGGLE: In Baltimore, Dan Rodricks wondered why the Angelos brothers, John and Lou, are “getting a nasty fight in public” when the Orioles could be “on the cusp of a new era of success”. Rodricks: “Don’t the Angeloses love owning a Major League team? They’re a very small club of Americans who can ever do that. Aren’t they proud to have hired sharp baseball executives to rebuild the organization?” The Angelos brothers have an “opportunity to be big men in Baltimore, real civic leaders,” rather than let the “feud continue, ending in the sale of the franchise just when the team could enter a era of winning seasons and playoffs.” (BALTIMORE SUN, 8/13).