03/21/2005

High Yield Report

by: Sandra Lea Abrams

...The privacy that cloaks both private equity firms and hedge funds may keep some away from the sports business. "A hedge fund in general will not tell you who their investors are, and the investors can change day to day, depending on the terms or conditions of the fund," said Salvatore Galatioto, a former sports finance banker with Lehman Brothers who left... earlier this month to start New York-based Galatioto Sports [Partners] with several Lehman colleagues. "The league would have to vote every time someone got in and someone got out [of the fund]. It would be very challenging to approve a hedge fund as the general partner." He added that the Bain proposal had many complexities that need to be worked out. "There are 30 individual owners, and you can't sell someone's franchise if they don't want to sell it. Plus, Canada has some fairly strict regulations on foreign ownership."...