# Family Offices Amass $3.8 Billion SpaceX Bet in Boost for Musk

An episode of [Bloomberg Intelligence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/326301337), 17 Aug 2026, 25 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/7f534b8c-9e91-429a-b102-ae3c00090c6d/1f0810f8-5f8e-4839-adf1-b4a90111c8cb/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=0ad812bf-fd15-4012-a18c-ae3c00090c76

Watch Paul and Scarlet LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF. Bloomberg Intelligence hosted by Paul Sweeney and Stacey Vanek Smith -Yiqin Shen, Bloomberg Equities Reporter, discusses 13F filings. Investment firms for ultra-wealthy individuals have built up billions of dollars of exposure to SpaceX, highlighting their ability to muscle in on sought-after business opportunities. More than a dozen family offices held a total of at least $3.8 billion in SpaceX through the first half of 2026, according to US filings. -Ed Ludlow, Bloomberg Tech Anchor, discusses top tech stories. Alphabet Inc. is looking to raise about A$5 billion in its debut bond offering in Australia, as US tech firms raise debt to fuel AI spending. Separately, AI-linked stocks rose after Anthropic PBC told prospective investors that its preliminary second quarter revenue was $11.5 billion, an at least 14-fold increase versus the same period a year ago. -Sam Fazeli, Bloomberg Intelligence, Director of Research for Global Industries and Senior Pharmaceuticals Analyst, discusses the latest in the biotech sector. AstraZeneca Plc is stopping a clinical trial of the experimental drug volrustomig as it didn’t look set to help fight lung cancer better than existing therapies. The company had two separate late-stage trial successes that strengthen key cancer franchises, including one where patients with non-small cell lung cancer received Tagrisso in combination with Orpathys. -Sridhar Natarajan, Bloomberg News Chief Wall Street Correspondent, discusses the Bloomberg Big Take story: “Big Take: ‘I Hate Losing’: Walter Rushes Makeover as DOJ Probes His Empire.” Description: The CEO of Guggenheim Partners and owner of the LA Dodgers flipped the Lakers within a year and has explored other steps to pay down loans from his insurers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
[0:10] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am
[0:14] Speaker 1: Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg
[0:17] Speaker 1: Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts,
[0:21] Speaker 1: or watch us live on YouTube.
[0:24] Speaker 2: It is thirteen f season, and that's always kind of
[0:26] Speaker 2: a fun time in the marketplace because you get to
[0:28] Speaker 2: see what some of your favorite investors, what they're buying,
[0:31] Speaker 2: what they're selling here, and that's certainly the case this time.
[0:34] Speaker 2: Each and Shen joins us here. She's a ecuty supporter
[0:36] Speaker 2: for Bloomberg News. She joins us live here in our
[0:38] Speaker 2: Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio.
[0:40] Speaker 3: Each and talk to us about.
[0:42] Speaker 2: Some of these ultra wealthy individuals, these family offices.
[0:47] Speaker 3: What are they buying?
[0:48] Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, so I would say for this certain ap qulder,
[0:52] Speaker 4: lots of attention has going to SpaceX Fabius. We know
[0:56] Speaker 4: space ass has this raka setting IPO right in and
[1:00] Speaker 4: it's for the first time like the public got to
[1:03] Speaker 4: see who are the sort of the earlier investor private
[1:08] Speaker 4: investor on its back and eternal from certain filings. More
[1:13] Speaker 4: than a dozen family offices at least hold was in
[1:18] Speaker 4: three point eight billion investments through the first of the year.
[1:22] Speaker 4: So that includes a family office from Higher Hotels Prisoner
[1:26] Speaker 4: who hold one point eight billion investment, and Michael Platt's
[1:31] Speaker 4: Blue Crash Capital and also just like super influential finance
[1:36] Speaker 4: dynasty back by Brazil's Mariira Salas. Each of them hold
[1:41] Speaker 4: over one hundred million of Steak. And also remember some
[1:45] Speaker 4: of these investors are also investors in Tesla and other
[1:50] Speaker 4: ELAMSK listed business empire.
[1:53] Speaker 5: So there are a lot of really exciting fast moving
[1:56] Speaker 5: stocks right now, a lot of excitement around AI and
[1:59] Speaker 5: things like that. What is about SpaceX that has this
[2:02] Speaker 5: group of investors so excited?
[2:05] Speaker 3: I think?
[2:05] Speaker 4: So it's interesting that we don't know when exactly they invested.
[2:11] Speaker 4: It could be before well before the public IPO or
[2:14] Speaker 4: before the merge it had with XAI. It actually takes
[2:18] Speaker 4: to another interesting highlighters that there are lots of college
[2:21] Speaker 4: endowment funds also invested in space As, including Harvard Management,
[2:26] Speaker 4: which is that endowment for the college it have two
[2:30] Speaker 4: point two build it and they're also the California University
[2:35] Speaker 4: of California Investment arm. So how it works as that
[2:38] Speaker 4: usually these college enowment funds. They invest through vc arms
[2:42] Speaker 4: ventral capital firms, and through the vcs they were like,
[2:45] Speaker 4: could be you know, early masters in SpaceX or to
[2:49] Speaker 4: wait before it became this AI was like the rocket
[2:51] Speaker 4: science start up right for many many years ago, So
[2:55] Speaker 4: that sort of it's just come a long way through
[2:58] Speaker 4: until what we see in the public filings.
[3:00] Speaker 2: And our good friends up at Cambridge Harvard they had
[3:04] Speaker 2: a stake in SpaceX, right, yeah, right, as.
[3:07] Speaker 4: We just mentioned, they have two point two bill in.
[3:11] Speaker 3: Nice good for them. What are we seeing?
[3:16] Speaker 2: Do we know when these people invested? You don't really know, right, right,
[3:19] Speaker 2: just that it was in the private round before they
[3:21] Speaker 2: went public.
[3:22] Speaker 3: That's all we really know.
[3:23] Speaker 4: Yeah, especially for SpaceX, right, we only got to know
[3:26] Speaker 4: this because now it became a public company. But yeah,
[3:29] Speaker 4: we wouldn't know. And there's also a forty five days
[3:32] Speaker 4: of lag between. Because the CTE half is a snapshot
[3:35] Speaker 4: of their CUTU portfolio, it could be possible that they
[3:39] Speaker 4: try some of their position or change their porfolio, you know,
[3:42] Speaker 4: throughout July, because it was a pretty turbulous month for
[3:46] Speaker 4: tech and AI stocks. But yeah, that part is a
[3:49] Speaker 4: question mark.
[3:50] Speaker 5: What are some of the other stocks that are I
[3:52] Speaker 5: guess generating excitement right now. I think I'm reading that
[3:55] Speaker 5: Berkshire has taken another huge chunk of Alphabet.
[4:00] Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, So Brischard has away. They added roughly
[4:04] Speaker 4: another eight billa in Alphabet. Yeah, and that's on top
[4:11] Speaker 4: of the ten billion private private placement they committed and
[4:14] Speaker 4: it's closed before And remember Alphabet was a position initially
[4:19] Speaker 4: started by Warren Buffett twenty twenty five a year ago.
[4:24] Speaker 4: Now it is runnder Grag at Bell. But apparently the
[4:27] Speaker 4: company is still pretty committed to this tag.
[4:29] Speaker 6: Pat.
[4:30] Speaker 2: You know what I've noticed over the list I don't know,
[4:32] Speaker 2: several years, I guess, is that we're not even looking
[4:35] Speaker 2: at these thirteen f's. It's just more and more family
[4:38] Speaker 2: offices are showing up here. I mean family offices. They're
[4:41] Speaker 2: becoming serious players out there in the investment world.
[4:43] Speaker 3: What what do you guys see from your reporting?
[4:46] Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's a good observation. I would agree with
[4:50] Speaker 4: that trend. And I would say yeah overall, because certain
[4:54] Speaker 4: F has the requirements. Is any investment funds I believes
[4:58] Speaker 4: one hundred mile or two hundred melo au ams, that's
[5:01] Speaker 4: the stresshold you need to report. So that's why we're
[5:04] Speaker 4: seeing on them into cultural at filings. But otherwise, yeah,
[5:09] Speaker 4: they've being very active. It just you don't they're also
[5:13] Speaker 4: being super under the radar for the most part with
[5:15] Speaker 4: their investments.
[5:17] Speaker 2: I think that's changing though, because they're getting so big
[5:19] Speaker 2: these family offices that they are showing up.
[5:22] Speaker 3: In some of these public filings.
[5:24] Speaker 6: Oh, is this just like.
[5:25] Speaker 5: A more private wealth coming or why is there such
[5:28] Speaker 5: a boom of private.
[5:30] Speaker 3: Office Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up
[5:34] Speaker 3: after this.
[5:38] Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
[5:42] Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
[5:45] Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
[5:48] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
[5:52] Speaker 3: Well, we know many things about AI.
[5:54] Speaker 2: One of the things we know is it's really expensive
[5:57] Speaker 2: and you need lots of capital to build this stuff out.
[5:59] Speaker 2: And it used to be when the tech companies needed capital,
[6:02] Speaker 2: they just used their cash on the bounty or their
[6:04] Speaker 2: free cash flow.
[6:05] Speaker 3: Uh huh.
[6:06] Speaker 2: AI is so expensive requires so much capital that these
[6:10] Speaker 2: companies are going to the equity markets and the fixed
[6:13] Speaker 2: income markets. And today Alphabet is looking to raise five
[6:17] Speaker 2: billion in a debt offering, a debut bond offering. Where Australia,
[6:21] Speaker 2: why not Lodow joints us here Bloomberg Tech host, he's
[6:24] Speaker 2: out there in San Francisco. Why do you think that
[6:27] Speaker 2: I love Australia, I've been there several times, short place,
[6:29] Speaker 2: But why do you think Alphabet's gone to Australia to
[6:32] Speaker 2: raise five I mean Australian dollars.
[6:34] Speaker 7: You gave a perfect summary of what's been happening since
[6:37] Speaker 7: the middle of twenty twenty five. I mean, for one thing,
[6:40] Speaker 7: Australia's bomb market's quite big, right, and so the capital
[6:45] Speaker 7: is available from there. But Alphabet leads this AI borrowing
[6:51] Speaker 7: boom that we've seen, you know, since the middle of
[6:53] Speaker 7: twenty twenty five. They'd already done about one hundred and
[6:55] Speaker 7: fourteen billion dollars worth, but it was also split largely
[7:00] Speaker 7: US nominated, but you know, EuroSwiss, franc et cetera. So
[7:06] Speaker 7: this three point six billion dollar Kangaroo bond action is
[7:10] Speaker 7: kind of diversifying that funding. But you're exactly right, like
[7:14] Speaker 7: even a giant like Alphabet cannot fund capex from its
[7:18] Speaker 7: own cash flows, and so it needs to go to
[7:21] Speaker 7: the capital markets to do that across equity and debt,
[7:24] Speaker 7: but the debt investor seems very willing, you know, to
[7:27] Speaker 7: support that that offering.
[7:30] Speaker 5: What is this money for? Exactly? Is this data centers?
[7:33] Speaker 3: Is this other things?
[7:34] Speaker 5: Why do they need to cheat amount of money?
[7:36] Speaker 7: So it is for data centers, and it is in
[7:39] Speaker 7: financial terms for capital expenditures.
[7:41] Speaker 2: Right.
[7:42] Speaker 7: So if you look at Alphabet's capex for twenty six,
[7:44] Speaker 7: it's approaching two hundred billion dollars and the expectation is
[7:48] Speaker 7: that it will be much bigger in twenty twenty seven
[7:50] Speaker 7: and bigger still in twenty twenty eight. Something that's really
[7:52] Speaker 7: interesting is that capex doesn't just go up because you've
[7:56] Speaker 7: got to build more stuff, right. It doesn't just go
[7:59] Speaker 7: up because you're saying, Okay, well I did ten data centers,
[8:01] Speaker 7: now I need to do twenty. It's also the cost environment,
[8:04] Speaker 7: so like labor, construction, materials, power, that is also seeing
[8:08] Speaker 7: some inflationary effects, and so the capex numbers also need
[8:11] Speaker 7: to rise to meet that environment.
[8:13] Speaker 2: And what are the companies saying about longer term capex
[8:17] Speaker 2: has related to AI? I guess I'm concerned that this
[8:22] Speaker 2: extraordinary high level of capex coming from many of these
[8:26] Speaker 2: tech companies, this is the new normal.
[8:28] Speaker 3: You don't just build.
[8:30] Speaker 2: Your AI and then it's there forever and you can
[8:32] Speaker 2: your CAPEX can go back down. It seems like this
[8:35] Speaker 2: may be the new level of borrowing. Do the companies
[8:38] Speaker 2: admit that or do they say no, this is kind
[8:40] Speaker 2: of a one time five or year or whatever.
[8:43] Speaker 7: There is a distinction probably then between what their capital
[8:47] Speaker 7: expenditure intensions are and what they're borrowing intentions are, right,
[8:50] Speaker 7: and what Alphabet had said after the last tranch of
[8:52] Speaker 7: dollar denominated bonds is, look, we plan to borrow from
[8:57] Speaker 7: the US debt market twice a year. And the signal
[9:01] Speaker 7: that the market took from that very explicit explanation was
[9:05] Speaker 7: we've done twice this year. Are you now done?
[9:08] Speaker 6: You know?
[9:08] Speaker 7: And so the bi thesis is really clear. There's a
[9:12] Speaker 7: lot of demand out there, hundreds of billions of dollars
[9:15] Speaker 7: of demand to support that borrowing. But there is also
[9:19] Speaker 7: the psychological aspective like when do they hit pause and stop?
[9:23] Speaker 7: And the three point six billion Ossie offering is very
[9:28] Speaker 7: small on a dollar basis compared to the twenty twenty
[9:31] Speaker 7: five billion they did in the two dollar denominated ones.
[9:34] Speaker 7: So it seems like they're kind of tapering off a bit.
[9:37] Speaker 5: So the bond market has been the subject of a
[9:39] Speaker 5: lot of news this summer. Yields have been up a lot.
[9:42] Speaker 5: Does this potentially affect government bond yields when there are
[9:46] Speaker 5: all these bonds being issued by huge companies?
[9:50] Speaker 7: You know, I might be convincing because of my British
[9:53] Speaker 7: schoolboy accent and Welsh charm, but the bomb market's not
[9:57] Speaker 7: my forte technology is. So, I mean, the one thing
[10:01] Speaker 7: I would say is that you can look at some
[10:03] Speaker 7: of the post issuance pricing action of those technology bonds
[10:06] Speaker 7: and corporate bonds and say, in some cases SpaceX, the
[10:09] Speaker 7: most notable that those underperformed and trailed away, And the
[10:14] Speaker 7: big pitch is the premium over treasuries. Right in the
[10:18] Speaker 7: first place. That was partly what some of the appetite
[10:21] Speaker 7: was driven by. But yeah, I ain't a fixed income guy.
[10:24] Speaker 7: I'll hunt it back to you.
[10:26] Speaker 2: So ed real quick anthropic saw some Bloomberg reporting here
[10:30] Speaker 2: eleven point four five billion dollars in revenue in the
[10:34] Speaker 2: second quarter, fourteen fold increase.
[10:37] Speaker 3: What is going on there?
[10:39] Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean that's real revenue, right, They're prelim numbers,
[10:41] Speaker 7: but that's data presented to prospective investors in a document
[10:45] Speaker 7: the Bloomberger has seen, which would indicate that having these
[10:48] Speaker 7: meetings with prospective investors ahead of an IPO or as
[10:50] Speaker 7: part of the process. The other data point is that
[10:53] Speaker 7: they had adjusted positive operating income. And like, if you
[10:57] Speaker 7: look at some of the AI link stocks that are
[10:58] Speaker 7: moving today, it's probably not just the idea that anthropics
[11:01] Speaker 7: trapping towards an IPO that it will happen, but also
[11:04] Speaker 7: like they're finding a way to do it without endless losses, right,
[11:08] Speaker 7: and lots of those names, Amazon, Alphabet have direct investment
[11:11] Speaker 7: exposure to Anthropic, but it kind of is validation of
[11:15] Speaker 7: the AI trade right now.
[11:17] Speaker 3: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
[11:24] Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
[11:28] Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Coarclay and Android
[11:31] Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
[11:34] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
[11:39] Speaker 2: I'd said it before, I'll say it again. I just
[11:41] Speaker 2: could not invest in biotech stocks. It is just too volatile.
[11:46] Speaker 2: I mean, it is a hit or miss. The test
[11:48] Speaker 2: Works stock doubles a dozen, it goes to zero.
[11:51] Speaker 5: When they hit though, it can be so huge, unbelievable.
[11:55] Speaker 2: So here's one where not working.
[11:58] Speaker 3: Out so well.
[11:58] Speaker 2: Astrozeneca is st being a clinical trial of the experimental drug.
[12:02] Speaker 3: I'm not going to pronounce it after it didn't look
[12:05] Speaker 3: set to help fight.
[12:06] Speaker 2: Lung cancer better than existing therapy. So I'm going to
[12:08] Speaker 2: go to Sam Fazzelli. He does all this healthcare stuff
[12:10] Speaker 2: for Bloomberg Intelligence. He's based in London. Have no idea
[12:13] Speaker 2: where he is right now. But Sam talks about Astrozenek
[12:18] Speaker 2: and just about this drug in particular, but just how
[12:22] Speaker 2: these big pharma companies kind.
[12:23] Speaker 3: Of try to pursue a portfolio approach of drug development.
[12:28] Speaker 6: Yeah, so Paul, first of all, I have to say,
[12:30] Speaker 6: don't worry about by it and just give all your
[12:32] Speaker 6: money to uncle Sam. You already committed to that in
[12:34] Speaker 6: the previous segment.
[12:35] Speaker 3: Right, that's right.
[12:38] Speaker 6: Let's talk about this. This is clinical trials are like that.
[12:41] Speaker 6: If you want to get a drug for a disease,
[12:42] Speaker 6: you've got to go through this. You got to prove
[12:45] Speaker 6: unlike some people would like to just make it up
[12:47] Speaker 6: whether something is bad or causes autism or not. You
[12:50] Speaker 6: got to prove that it works, and you've got to
[12:52] Speaker 6: prove that it's worth the side effects. Here, they ran
[12:56] Speaker 6: the test in a very difficult group of patients once
[12:58] Speaker 6: who don't normally respond to even the best drug we
[13:01] Speaker 6: have today, which is merks Ki truder, and it didn't
[13:05] Speaker 6: work out. But they had two other results that came
[13:07] Speaker 6: out today. In fact, one of them was probably more relevant,
[13:09] Speaker 6: which is why astrostock is not down right. So I
[13:14] Speaker 6: think it's the way you reported, Paul. At the end
[13:17] Speaker 6: of the day, three chrials came out today, Two of
[13:20] Speaker 6: them hit, one of them didn't. That to me is
[13:22] Speaker 6: a wind.
[13:24] Speaker 5: What are some of the exciting things on the horizon
[13:26] Speaker 5: right now? Obviously GLP ones have been such a huge
[13:30] Speaker 5: market mover, such an economic force, but I feel like
[13:33] Speaker 5: over the summer it's just been all tech news in
[13:35] Speaker 5: the markets. Is there anything on the horizon that you
[13:38] Speaker 5: really have your eye on right now?
[13:40] Speaker 6: Yeah? I mean in terms of drugs, there's always something
[13:44] Speaker 6: exciting coming on. And if we look at cancer specifically
[13:48] Speaker 6: now because the current conversation is cancer, we have a
[13:51] Speaker 6: revolutionary drug coming from revolution Medicines for pancreatic cancer, something
[13:56] Speaker 6: that is going to at least open the fire the
[14:01] Speaker 6: starting guns and actually treating these patients giving them a
[14:05] Speaker 6: chance of doubling their survival. And of course the all
[14:08] Speaker 6: these numbers that are ones who are much better treated
[14:11] Speaker 6: in terms of the you know, you go with the
[14:12] Speaker 6: mean and median, but there are people in there get
[14:15] Speaker 6: much better efficacy. And it is the starting guns because
[14:17] Speaker 6: we need to deal with side effect profile there. So
[14:20] Speaker 6: there's that that's coming and that's going to really accelerate
[14:24] Speaker 6: efforts there. There's a whole load of other stuff going on.
[14:27] Speaker 6: There's other versions of these GLP ones coming up. There
[14:30] Speaker 6: are drugs for neuropsychiatric diseases that are making big waves.
[14:34] Speaker 6: There are drugs for reducing a cholesterol oral drug that
[14:38] Speaker 6: recently approved. There's a lot happening. Unfortunately, AI is this
[14:43] Speaker 6: subject dourjure and it will keep taking sucking the oxygen
[14:47] Speaker 6: out of the room.
[14:48] Speaker 2: How does AI apply to your business, Sam, in the
[14:51] Speaker 2: biotechn of farmer space, I would think it would make
[14:53] Speaker 2: the average scientist and lab smarter better.
[14:58] Speaker 6: How much time do you have? Oh? Shoot, The answer
[15:03] Speaker 6: to that is actually exactly what you just said. The
[15:07] Speaker 6: point isn't to replace scientists. Remember we've got a brain.
[15:11] Speaker 6: If you are for example, utilizing your brain to understand, say,
[15:16] Speaker 6: neuroscience and how neurons work. Even there you might be
[15:20] Speaker 6: a expert in visual field or eyes or whatever, you
[15:25] Speaker 6: don't know how much about the nose and olfactory system.
[15:27] Speaker 6: AI is able to synthesize that the enormous amount of
[15:31] Speaker 6: data and help you make sure that you're not missing
[15:34] Speaker 6: something that someone else has seen in a completely unrelated field.
[15:38] Speaker 6: As an example. Right, so you keep using these things,
[15:41] Speaker 6: you bring the biology into bear. With the massive amount
[15:44] Speaker 6: of data analysis, we're going to see twenty thirty percent
[15:48] Speaker 6: of time shaved of drugs get into market, and we're
[15:51] Speaker 6: going to see better biology married to people. You need
[15:55] Speaker 6: the people in there can't just do it.
[15:57] Speaker 2: And it's on at the minute, Sam, I was looking
[15:58] Speaker 2: at my weather app. I clicked on London eighty degrees
[16:02] Speaker 2: as far as I can see now in New York,
[16:04] Speaker 2: no problem.
[16:05] Speaker 3: We just crank up the AC. What are you people,
[16:08] Speaker 3: What are you doing over there with this heat? You
[16:09] Speaker 3: guys don't have air conditioning.
[16:10] Speaker 5: You have air conditioning?
[16:12] Speaker 6: Are air conditioning? That's okay. We have little mobile fans
[16:16] Speaker 6: that you carry on. That's enough for us. And marry that.
[16:19] Speaker 6: And also just look a bit further up, Pull It's
[16:22] Speaker 6: all coming back. Rain is coming out. Our umbrellas will
[16:24] Speaker 6: be out, so don't worry.
[16:26] Speaker 3: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
[16:33] Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
[16:37] Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple Corplay and Android
[16:40] Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
[16:44] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
[16:48] Speaker 3: Here's the story.
[16:48] Speaker 2: I did not have my Bingo card at all for
[16:51] Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. The sale of the Los Angeles Lakers
[16:54] Speaker 2: last week. Nowhere ex me and I followed the business
[16:58] Speaker 2: of sports pretty closely. The sea of Guggenheim Partners and
[17:01] Speaker 2: the owner of the LA Dodgers flipped the Lakers within
[17:04] Speaker 2: a year and has explored other steps to pay down
[17:07] Speaker 2: loans from his insurers. So this is not just selling
[17:09] Speaker 2: a team. This is a dude. Mark Walter is a Guggenheim, big,
[17:13] Speaker 2: big private equity shop. He's got some financial issues out
[17:17] Speaker 2: there and he's got to kind of move some pieces around. Fortunately,
[17:20] Speaker 2: ourn ex guest is following all these pieces. Shri Nana Rogen,
[17:23] Speaker 2: chief Wall Street correspondent for Bloomberg News Street, who is
[17:28] Speaker 2: Mark Walter and what's going on there?
[17:32] Speaker 4: Ye?
[17:33] Speaker 8: Mark Walter is one of America's wealthiest financiers. And the
[17:37] Speaker 8: real story is Mark Walter was in the backwaters of
[17:40] Speaker 8: finance in the late nineteen nineties.
[17:42] Speaker 3: No one knew him.
[17:43] Speaker 8: He was running a asset back securitization firm died with
[17:48] Speaker 8: the commercial paper marketplace. But the real trick, the real
[17:51] Speaker 8: game changer for him, was a meeting with one of
[17:53] Speaker 8: the descendants of the original Guggenheim dynasty, Meyer Guggenheim, the
[17:58] Speaker 8: mining battern from the Gilded Age. He meets his great
[18:01] Speaker 8: grandson who's not happy with how advisors have been dealing
[18:04] Speaker 8: with that family money. They come up with this plan
[18:07] Speaker 8: where he folds his firm into their family office and
[18:10] Speaker 8: today somehow become no connection to that family, but somehow
[18:13] Speaker 8: he's become torch bearer for that great family name, for
[18:17] Speaker 8: that Gugenheim name, because once he folded that firm, he
[18:21] Speaker 8: grew that into Gougenheam Investments. Google TAM Security is run
[18:24] Speaker 8: by former bearst and CEO Alan Schwartz. With all that
[18:27] Speaker 8: money expand into other investments, most prominently a stable of
[18:33] Speaker 8: expansive and some glittering sports teams Los Angeles Dodgers, the
[18:37] Speaker 8: Chelsea Football Club, Cadillac F one team until recently the
[18:42] Speaker 8: Los Angeles Lakers. And the only reason we're all talking
[18:45] Speaker 8: about this is the shock news that came out here
[18:47] Speaker 8: is a professional sports team owner selling a team, flipping
[18:51] Speaker 8: a team less than a year after hebort it. The
[18:54] Speaker 8: Lakers are getting the treatment like it's some sort of
[18:57] Speaker 8: fixer upper on the New Jersey Shore.
[18:59] Speaker 5: I know, I've never heard the term flipping in conjunction
[19:02] Speaker 5: with like a professional sports team. Only you ranch style homes.
[19:06] Speaker 8: And you get the sense that in some ways it
[19:10] Speaker 8: was very lucky for him. We don't have any information
[19:13] Speaker 8: that suggests that he was quietly going around shopping the Lakers,
[19:16] Speaker 8: because again, only in.
[19:18] Speaker 3: October, don't make the money.
[19:19] Speaker 8: Only in October twenty twenty five did he even get
[19:21] Speaker 8: the approval for this. But somehow someone clearly told Bob
[19:24] Speaker 8: Biger and Josh Kushner, at least that's our understanding, that hey,
[19:27] Speaker 8: you guys should knock on the door of Mark Walter.
[19:29] Speaker 8: You're showing interest in the NBA universe. He might need
[19:31] Speaker 8: the money. They go in there, they make an offer
[19:33] Speaker 8: he can't refuse and suddenly he slipped the team for
[19:36] Speaker 8: more than two point five billion what he paid for
[19:38] Speaker 8: less than a year ago, which is incredible in itself.
[19:41] Speaker 8: As one finance executive put it to us, it feels
[19:44] Speaker 8: like a lucrative fire sale.
[19:46] Speaker 3: Yes, cut a lot of money.
[19:47] Speaker 8: It accelerates his bid to solve for the other problems
[19:52] Speaker 8: in his financial empire. And that is why this is
[19:54] Speaker 8: in the news. That is why we all want to
[19:55] Speaker 8: talk about. Mark Walter is in addition to the sports team,
[19:59] Speaker 8: as he said, he also owns insurers. His whole model,
[20:01] Speaker 8: almost a pioneer on Wall Street in some sense, was
[20:05] Speaker 8: to take that sleepy, boring insurance money, deploy them in
[20:09] Speaker 8: not just bonds and equities and treasuries out there, but
[20:12] Speaker 8: go and find other more complex investments, whether that was
[20:15] Speaker 8: to back his Dodgers purchase or some of the other
[20:18] Speaker 8: pieces of his sprawling business universe.
[20:21] Speaker 2: So do we know what the problems are at the
[20:24] Speaker 2: insurance companies that kind of started this whole.
[20:26] Speaker 8: Thing, right, And there was a filing from the insurance
[20:29] Speaker 8: company that said, oops, we got a subpoena in February
[20:31] Speaker 8: from the government and we did some numbers again and
[20:36] Speaker 8: looks like our affiliated investments, which is money that let's
[20:40] Speaker 8: just shorthanded as from Walter's insurers going to other parts
[20:45] Speaker 8: of Walter's businesses much higher than previously thought. How much
[20:49] Speaker 8: higher we went from some about at least in one
[20:51] Speaker 8: of the insurance firms of Delaware Life, we went from
[20:53] Speaker 8: three percent being affiliated assets to forty percent being affiliated assets.
[20:57] Speaker 8: You can see why that would make regular It is nervous.
[21:01] Speaker 8: That is a big change. The sense here is and
[21:04] Speaker 8: that is what prosecutors and regulators that are looking at,
[21:06] Speaker 8: were third party intermediaries used just to borrow the money
[21:10] Speaker 8: and then channel them off to other parts of Walter's
[21:14] Speaker 8: business without the insurance company or even the ratings firm
[21:18] Speaker 8: having a true picture of where that money was going.
[21:21] Speaker 8: And that's been the focus. That's why Walter, through his
[21:25] Speaker 8: holding company TWG, is racing, racing to cut back this
[21:30] Speaker 8: high forty percent rate of affiliated investments, presumably to make
[21:34] Speaker 8: sure that regulators can get comfortable again with this remediation plan.
[21:37] Speaker 8: If they're able to do that, and that's why the
[21:41] Speaker 8: sudden influx from the Lakers sale when it happens, will
[21:45] Speaker 8: be good. There are other options that are exploring to
[21:48] Speaker 8: try and raise money to be able to pay on
[21:49] Speaker 8: some of these structures.
[21:51] Speaker 4: Is here?
[21:51] Speaker 3: Do we know how much the total hole is?
[21:53] Speaker 8: I don't know if hole is necessarily the right term,
[21:56] Speaker 8: because we don't understand that. It's not like he has
[21:58] Speaker 8: to get rid of all of it. But we're talking
[21:59] Speaker 8: about suddenly roughly twenty billion dollars across his two insurers
[22:02] Speaker 8: being in affiliated assets, and the goal is to try
[22:05] Speaker 8: and bring it down substantially.
[22:06] Speaker 3: Okay, is do we know?
[22:08] Speaker 5: I mean, did so? He didn't necessarily want to sell
[22:11] Speaker 5: the Lakers, even though he made a lot of money
[22:13] Speaker 5: on the sale.
[22:15] Speaker 3: He didn't.
[22:15] Speaker 8: Definitely, it stands to reason that someone who's collected sports team,
[22:19] Speaker 8: someone who's so invested in the sports team, invested emotionally,
[22:23] Speaker 8: not just through his wealth. Right some thinks yeah, yeah,
[22:26] Speaker 8: And like, look look at what the Dodgers are doing.
[22:27] Speaker 8: Two times defending World Series champion. They were out there
[22:30] Speaker 8: the Rose Garden just last month being fettered by President
[22:33] Speaker 8: Donald Trump. So you wouldn't think that he wanted to
[22:35] Speaker 8: buy this as if it was some private equity deal
[22:38] Speaker 8: where he could ring out some efficiencies and then sell
[22:40] Speaker 8: it for a higher price the very next year. That
[22:42] Speaker 8: wasn't the goal, But from all the moon music we're hearing.
[22:45] Speaker 8: It certainly helps.
[22:46] Speaker 2: So there was some reporting I think last week where
[22:48] Speaker 2: he had mister Walter discussed putting up Guggenheim's securities, you know,
[22:55] Speaker 2: maybe either putting up for collatter or selling it or
[22:58] Speaker 2: monetizing it somehow.
[23:00] Speaker 3: Where are we with that?
[23:01] Speaker 2: I mean, should we expect more asset sales from his collection?
[23:05] Speaker 8: Look, things are very fluid. That our understanding was even
[23:08] Speaker 8: before the first set of new stories in the probe
[23:09] Speaker 8: came out, even before anyone knew anything about the Lakers
[23:12] Speaker 8: being up for sale, and just judging by the timeline,
[23:15] Speaker 8: way before the Kushner and Niger even went up to
[23:18] Speaker 8: him and said they would like to buy the Lakers.
[23:20] Speaker 8: They have had early deliberations with different folks in the
[23:22] Speaker 8: market trying to find various ways they could raise money,
[23:25] Speaker 8: and one of the options was could we do some
[23:28] Speaker 8: nine month to twelve month loans where you could give
[23:30] Speaker 8: us five hundred million or a billion, and we'd back
[23:32] Speaker 8: the guarantee that with collateral in the form of various assets,
[23:36] Speaker 8: including the equity stake in Google I'm partners, which again
[23:40] Speaker 8: tells you the stated path to recovery. Some of the
[23:42] Speaker 8: lenders were saying, the potential lenders were saying would have
[23:45] Speaker 8: been if they failed to pay back the money that
[23:46] Speaker 8: they could enforce on that collateral, which tells you you
[23:50] Speaker 8: wouldn't normally want to put up your Crown financial jeuele
[23:52] Speaker 8: out there and say, okay, I could use that as collateral.
[23:55] Speaker 8: So it tells you what they were thinking about in
[23:59] Speaker 8: the realm of the art of the possible. It is
[24:01] Speaker 8: unclear whether that is still a live deal, but what
[24:04] Speaker 8: is clear is they're exploring all options possible to make
[24:07] Speaker 8: sure they get out of this insurance mess.
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