The richest owner in the NFL declares bankruptcy.
Somewhat.
Via TheAthletic.com, Panthers owner David Tepper has taken his real estate development company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy after separate efforts to build a new training facility and headquarters in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
According to the filing, the company has liabilities in the range of $100 million to $500 million and up to 49 creditors. The company’s assets are in the same range. The goal will be to reorganize the company financially, in an orderly manner that allows it to appear with a cleaner slate – and a more manageable balance sheet.
This process will allow Tepper Real Estate to pay the contractors who worked on the abandoned site, and the reality is that there is a good chance that some or all of them will be paid less than they deserve.
Yes, it seems strange that a billionaire could evade or reduce financial responsibilities by taking advantage of bankruptcy laws. But the rich don’t get this or stay that way by being stupid. By setting up a company that was separate from his personal fortune and commissioning that company with the aborted construction project for the football team’s stadium, Tepper could protect himself from having to plunge into his own stake to pay 100 cents on the dollar to those who provided services to a project Tepper shut down once public funding did not arrive. .
The NFL, as described in the TheAthletic.com article, has no problem with the situation because the company declaring bankruptcy is separate from the club’s ownership. However, this debt was incurred directly from an attempt to build a new practice facility and headquarters for the NFL team. The notion that an NFL owner could play a financial game in order to compel those who owed a certain amount of money to devote professional efforts to building an NFL facility to essentially take everything they could get from a bankruptcy property seems wrong, no matter how much it might be technically valid or legal.