American businessman (born 1960) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mark Richard Walter (born January 1, 1960) is an American businessman and the chief executive officer of Guggenheim Partners, a privately held global financial services firm with more than $325 billion in assets under management.
Mark Walter | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 1, 1960 Cedar Rapids, Iowa, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Creighton University (B.A.) Northwestern University (J.D.) |
| Occupation | Investment manager |
| Employer | Guggenheim Partners |
| Known for | Sports team ownership |
| Spouse | Kimbra Walter |
| Website | guggenheimpartners.com |
Outside investing, Walter is best known for his extensive investments in professional sports. He is the primary owner and chairman of Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers, which have won two World Series under his leadership. He is also the primary owner of auto racing organization Andretti Global, which operates the Cadillac Formula 1 team, and the Women's National Basketball Association's Los Angeles Sparks. In addition, he owns 20% of the National Basketball Association's Los Angeles Lakers and 12.7% of BlueCo, a holding company that controls Premier League club Chelsea and Ligue 1 club RC Strasbourg. He also owns the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) and sits on the boards of his alma maters Creighton University and Northwestern University.
Mark Walter is a native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa and graduated from Cedar Rapids Jefferson High School in 1978.[1] His father, Ed, worked at a local concrete block manufacturing plant.[1] Growing up, he was a fan of the Chicago Cubs baseball team.[2]
Walter attended Creighton University, where he studied accounting and graduated with a bachelor's degree in business in 1982.[3] He then graduated from Northwestern University Law School in 1985.[3][4] Walter gave Northwestern's law school $40 million in 2014[4] and endowed a law scholarship with his wife in 2015.[5]
Walter is married to Kimbra Walter, an attorney. She attended Northwestern University and Southern Methodist University Law School.[6] They have a daughter and live in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago.[3]
Walter serves as a trustee or director of several organizations, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which is named after the Guggenheim family;[7] Creighton University;[8] Northwestern University;[9] and the Field Museum.[10] Kimbra Walter is a trustee of the Lincoln Park Zoo.[3] Walter and his wife own White Oak Conservation, an animal refuge in Florida.[11] In 2011, Walter made a $30,800 contribution to the Democratic National Committee, as well as a $5,000 contribution to Obama for America.[3]
Walter is notoriously private,[3] and estimates of his wealth vary wildly. In May 2024, Bloomberg Businessweek estimated that Walter's net worth was $6 billion.[12] However, in October 2024, Bloomberg raised the estimate to $12 billion,[13] on the assumption that Walter owned 20% of Guggenheim Partners.[14] As of February 2025, Forbes valued Walter's net worth at $6.1 billion.[4]
In 1996, Walter and Steven E. Johnson co-founded the Liberty Hampshire Company.[15] In 2000, he helped found Guggenheim Partners with assistance from Guggenheim heir Peter Lawson-Johnson II;[3] he now serves as its CEO.[16] Through his work at Guggenheim, he got to know future investment partner Todd Boehly, who spent 14 years with the firm.[17]
Walter is heavily involved in the insurance industry. He owns 21% of TWG Global Holdings,[14] through which he owns 19% of Group 1001, a company that owns various insurance companies.[18][14] He is the controlling shareholder of Delaware Life Holdings, LLC, and serves on the board of EquiTrust Life.[19] TWG Global also maintains a stake in Carvana.[14]
Walter has a personal stake in Beyond Meat.[4] In addition, in 2021, it was reported that Walter had purchased numerous commercial and historic buildings in Crested Butte, Colorado, where his family frequently vacations,[3] for an unknown purpose.[20][21]
According to the Los Angeles Times, Walter utilized financial firepower from various Guggenheim-related insurance funds to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012.[22] The Guggenheim insurers frequently deal in annuities, which provide large amounts of upfront capital but commit the insurers to long-term payment calendars.[23] Walter frequently co-invests with Todd Boehly, a former Guggenheim employee who helped Walter's Guggenheim Partners acquire annuity specialist Security Benefit and bought the company from Guggenheim in 2015.[24] According to Boehly, his investment business creates or buys cash-needy companies, which Security Benefit's cash flow helps grow. Provided that the companies actually turn a profit, these profits can then be used to fund Security Benefit's annuities. Boehly earns money, in part, by buying stakes in the companies, which appreciate in value due to the investment from Security Benefit.[25] Forbes noted that other investors, like Warren Buffett (whose Berkshire Hathaway company owns insurer GEICO), have used similar tactics to make investments and acquisitions, although it added that Buffett "prefers mundane businesses like truck stops and ketchup."[24]
Because of their long-term payment horizon, insurers that sell annuities are expected to prioritize long-term financial stability.[23] As such, Guggenheim's investments in sports have sometimes been questioned by industry commentators. When Walter bought the Dodgers in 2012, The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote a critical column opining that insurance companies ordinarily do not invest in comparatively risky assets like sports franchises.[26] After insurers reportedly contributed at least $300 million to the Dodgers bid, government regulators investigated the arrangement but declined to take further action.[27] In addition, in 2015, a representative from the Consumer Federation of America said that he would prefer to see a more conservative strategy from the Guggenheim insurers. By controlling multiple insurance companies, Guggenheim freshens up the balance sheets of each insurer by arranging for one insurer to provide reinsurance for the others, a practice that Guggenheim has defended as regulator-approved. Guggenheim has also struck a reinsurance deal with a company owned by a Dodgers investor.[23]
Following early qualms, Guggenheim's balance sheet was bolstered by high television rights fees, as "live sports programming has proven far more resistant to disruption from the likes of Netflix and Amazon than other entertainment fare such as TV series and films."[28] In buying the Dodgers, Walter intentionally broke with the conventional wisdom that National Football League franchises were more valuable than baseball teams, pointing out that the NFL does not allow teams to own their own television broadcasting rights.[29] In addition, Walter and his business associates have provided collateral to the insurers, including Dodgers shares, Walter's stake in Carvana, and various Wendy's hamburger franchises.[27] Sorkin has acknowledged that Guggenheim's investment principles are not unique, as "many insurance companies use their premiums to make investments ... a slice of which can sometimes even be speculative," and that insurance companies ordinarily comply with the law if they "meet minimum capital requirements as determined by various regulators."[26][30]
According to a family representative, Walter owns 27% of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.[14] In 2012, he led Guggenheim Baseball Management (GBM)'s $2.15 billion purchase of the team.[31] His personal contribution was reportedly $100 million,[32] with Guggenheim Partners-related businesses contributing another $1.213 billion.[33] (The precise contribution from insurance companies has been disputed, with The Wall Street Journal estimating a contribution of "at least $300 million"[27] and LA Weekly putting the figure at $100 million.[23]) He had previously looked into buying the Houston Astros.[34]
The price paid for the Dodgers was initially described as "stunning,"[31] as Forbes had valued the team at $1.4 billion and rivals were considering opening bids in the $1.6 billion range.[35] However, journalist Molly Knight later revealed that Steven A. Cohen (who later bought the New York Mets) had already offered Dodgers owner Frank McCourt $2 billion.[36] Walter explained that he opened with his best bid so that McCourt would call off his auction for the Dodgers,[31] which was scheduled for the following day.[37] In March 2024, Forbes valued the Dodgers at $5.45 billion.[38]
Walter appointed Stan Kasten to run the team.[22] Under Walter, Kasten, and president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman,[39] the team became baseball's "most perennially competitive team,"[13] and won the World Series in 2020 and 2024.[40] Less than a year after GBM bought the team, the Dodgers signed the most lucrative television deal in baseball.[41] Aided by the TV deal, the Dodgers significantly increased their payroll, which had previously been constricted by McCourt's cash flow issues.[22] Although the Dodgers have not always been the year's biggest spender,[42] Walter greenlighted spending sprees in 2012 (when the Dodgers "easily" set the MLB single-season payroll record for the next season),[43] 2023 (when the team signed $1.145 billion in contracts),[44] and 2024 (when the team added four nine-figure contracts in fewer than 12 months).[45]
Other members of the Guggenheim consortium include Peter Guber, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Stan Kasten, Todd Boehly, Bobby Patton, Billie Jean King, Ilana Kloss, Alan Smolinisky, and Robert L. Plummer.[46][47][48]
Walter owns one-sixth of the Los Angeles Sparks women's basketball team,[14] which a group of Dodgers partners bought in 2014.[49] The WNBA's press release described Walter and Magic Johnson as the leaders of the ownership group. After buying the team, Walter commented that Johnson "came to me and said we need to help save the Sparks and keep them in Los Angeles."[50] The Sparks won the 2016 WNBA championship and made the 2017 WNBA Finals.[51] Beyond the Sparks, a Group 1001 subsidiary signed Caitlin Clark as a brand ambassador in March 2024, shortly before the 2024 WNBA draft.[52]
Walter owns 20% of the Los Angeles Lakers men's basketball team.[14] In 2021, he teamed up with Boehly to buy out Philip Anschutz's 27% stake for an estimated $1.35 billion. Walter and Boehly reportedly have a right of first refusal if the Buss family ever sells the team.[53] Walter had previously joined David Geffen, Oprah Winfrey, and Larry Ellison's unsuccessful 2014 bid for the Los Angeles Clippers,[54] which eventually went to Steve Ballmer.[32]
Walter once led a consortium that bid for Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns the Los Angeles Kings and is the Lakers' landlord, but Anschutz decided to keep the company.[32]
Walter owns 12.7% of BlueCo,[14] a holding company that bought English Premier League football club Chelsea in 2022 and Ligue 1 club RC Strasbourg Alsace in 2023.[17] BlueCo is primarily owned by Clearlake Capital (represented by Behdad Eghbali and José E. Feliciano), and Eghbali is the primary figure at BlueCo, but Walter's investment partner Todd Boehly has a veto over major decisions.[17] Walter serves on Chelsea's board,[55] but does not play an active role in day-to-day operations.[17]
On June 29, 2023, the Mark Walter Group and BJK Enterprises purchased the intellectual property and other key elements of the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), a professional women's hockey league in the United States and Canada.[56] Headed by Walter and Billie Jean King, respectively, both businesses had entered a partnership with the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) in May 2022, with the intent to create a new professional women's ice hockey league in North America.[57] The buyout changed the landscape in North American women's professional hockey, as it resulted in a single league, the Professional Women's Hockey League, with stakeholders from both the PHF and PWHPA. The new league started in Toronto on January 1, 2024, with King performing the ceremonial puck drop.[58] The Mark Walter Group owns the inaugural six teams.[59][60] The league's championship trophy, the Walter Cup, is named after Mark Walter and his wife, Kimbra.[61]
Walter owns 21% of TWG Global Holdings,[14] which owns motorsports companies Andretti Global, Spire Motorsports and Wayne Taylor Racing. Andretti Global operates the Cadillac Formula 1 team, which will begin competing in 2026.[62]
Through Group 1001 and its subsidiary Gainbridge, Walter began sponsoring Andretti Global in 2018, when it was still owned by Michael Andretti.[63][64] In 2019, Gainbridge also became the presenting sponsor of the Indianapolis 500.[63] After TWG announced its takeover of Andretti Global, it revealed that Dan Towriss, the CEO of Group 1001,[63] would serve as the CEO of TWG's motorsports businesses.[65]
Walter and his wife were the primary financial backers of the 2018-19 PSA World Squash Championships; with their help, the event presented its largest winners' purses in history. They continue to back the event, as well as the Windy City Open.[66]
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