HSG Creditors: ‘This Is Now War’

On Monday, the Rangers and the Greenberg-Ryan group announced what amounts to a prepackaged bankruptcy plan in order to facilitate the sale of the team. This announcement was made without giving prior notice to the creditors of the Hicks Sports Group. Said creditors are mad.

[With the move yesterday] creditor sources promise a major response, with one source saying, “This is now war.” The creditors’ lawyers are in Texas to contest the filing, which would give the creditors around $230M, one source said. They had been seeking about $300M and had bargained up to around $280M. But the bankruptcy filing takes away the gains made at the negotiating table over the last few months.

It seems to me - and I am far from an expert - that the issue here is that the creditors don’t think the Rangers are being sold for fair market value. From Bloomberg:

The Texas Rangers said there is “no viable option” for the team except a $575 million bankruptcy sale, while a group of secured lenders said the club could get a better deal.
...
The plan has “many conflicts” and doesn’t make the most of the club’s assets, said Dennis Dunne, a lawyer for a group of secured lenders. There is a “higher bid out there,” he told the judge.

It there’s a higher bid, then the creditors, of course, would stand to get more money. This’ll be an interesting one to follow, as we are not even close to being out of the woods. At the least, this could continue to drag on, and at the worst, it is within the realm of possibility that the judge sides with the creditors and determines that the Rangers must be put up for ‘fair auction,’ such that the alleged higher bid could emerge.