Bruce Ratner is looking to unload the remainder of his ownership stake in the Brooklyn Nets, and has brought investment bank Evercore Partners on board to advise him on a deal.
Ratner’s Forest City Ratner, along with a group of investors, paid $300 million for the Nets 10 years ago while they were still based in New Jersey, with the aim of bringing the team to Brooklyn to serve as anchor tenant for a new arena. Ratner then sold 80 percent of the team and a 45 percent stake in the Barclays Arena to Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov for $200 million in 2009.
The arena opened in 2012, and is the central piece of the Atlantic Yards project, a $4 billion redevelopment of a Long Island Rail Road train yard.
Forbes valued the Nets at $780 million in January, but how much the team is worth currently is not clear, according to the Wall Street Journal. For the 12 months that ended Jan. 31, Forest City reported a $4.7 million loss on its ownership stake, and the company said it didn’t meet a “capital call” to fund the team in a securities filing cited by the Journal. [WSJ, 1st item] — Julie Strickland