Seeds of surprising Orioles sale were planted in July meeting of John Angelos and David Rubenstein
The seeds of the surprising Orioles sale were planted when team CEO and chairman John Angelos invited David Rubenstein to a meeting in Nantucket in July and offered the financier a non-controlling interest in the team.
Rubenstein said he was interested, but wanted more.
“I told him I’d think about it and get back to him,” Rubenstein told The Baltimore Sun. “And then, ultimately, I said I would be interested but I would like to have some path to control at some point.”
It turned out that Rubenstein, 74, a billionaire philanthropist, co-founder of the Carlyle Group and a Baltimore native, didn’t need to wait long.
“John came back after a couple of weeks of thinking about that and said, ‘Well, maybe we can move towards control sooner,’ and then we started negotiating this arrangement,” Rubenstein said.
Major League Baseball on Wednesday formally approved the purchase of the team by Rubenstein and his partnership group in a deal valuing the franchise and assets at $1.725 billion.
Rubenstein was interviewed Sunday on condition that his remarks not be published until MLB approved the sale so that he would not appear to get ahead of the process.
Rubenstein will immediately become “control person,” meaning he is accountable to MLB for the team. His group will initially assume a nearly 40% ownership stake in the Orioles and has an agreement to purchase additional equity after the death last Saturday of John’s father, Peter Angelos, the longtime owner.
It had not been clear when the Angelos family decided to sell the team.
A 2022 suit filed as part of an Angelos family feud included a claim by Peter’s widow, Georgia Angelos, that Peter’s wishes were that the Orioles “should be sold on his death so Georgia could enjoy the great wealth they had amassed together.” The documents indicated she was preparing to do so, noting she “had retained Goldman Sachs and Jones Day to provide investment banking and legal services in connection with the sale of the Orioles.”
But — as John Angelos negotiated a new lease with the Maryland Stadium Authority through most of 2023 — there was no indication the family was ready to sell. The lease, approved by the Board of Public Works in December, included a complex option in which the team can receive rights to develop state-owned land in the stadium area.
State leaders said they did not learn of the sale agreement until news outlets began to report on it in January. “I feel lied to. I feel misled,” state Treasurer Dereck Davis said at the time. “We had a right to know given the amount of investment we were committing to this.”
John Angelos and his spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Rubenstein had long been interested in the club.
“That’s been hanging around for a very long time,” Carlyle Group senior adviser Edward Mathias, who has known Rubenstein for more than 50 years, said in an interview. “But for a long time the Angelos family did not want to sell.”
Rubenstein said he hoped to be an owner “that people respect — most importantly the fans, the players, the managers, the administrative office personnel. And win as many games as we can.”