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Donald Sterling was offered $2 billion for a team he originally bought for $12 million.
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Los Angeles Clippers interim CEO Richard Parsons is being called as a witness on Tuesday, to support Shelly Sterling’s attempt to sell the team for $2 billion to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
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The ousted team owner Donald Sterling, Shelly’s husband, objects to the sale.
Parsons, a former CEO of Time Warner and Citigroup, took over running the Clippers in May, after Donald’s banishment from the NBA for letting his girlfriend tape him making racist comments. The league ordered Sterling to sell the team, but after his wife had found a $2 billion buyer, Sterling refused.
Shelly Sterling is also on the Tuesday witness list, alongside Dean Bonham, a leading negotiator of business and sports sponsorship contracts and former president of the Utah Jazz.
The court battle centers on whether Shelly Sterling was authorized to make a deal with Ballmer on behalf of
the Sterling Family Trust.
Soon after she began negotiations, Donald Sterling revoked the trust, trying to pull the run from under his wife’s legs.
Sterling originally paid $12 million for the Clippers.
He told the court he would never sell the team and plans, instead, to be suing the NBA for the rest of his life.
Shelley Sterling says her husband is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and not competent to handle his own affairs. But so far the court has not been asked to decide that matter.
On Monday, Darren Schield, the CFO of Donald Sterling’s properties, testified that if the sale fails his boss could be forced to sell much of his real estate holdings, to cover $500 million in debts. When Sterling dissolved the family trust, the three banks he did business with decided to recall their loans to him.
According to Schield, if Sterling goes ahead and dumps half a billion dollars worth of apartment buildings there’s no telling what could happen to the Los Angeles real estate market.
The NBA banned Donald Sterling for life for making racist statements on tape. Sterling said he wasn’t a racist, and the talk shows had much fun with him, until it became obvious that he is just an old, sick and lonely man who isn’t all there mentally.
The NBA has threatened that if the Clippers’ sale doesn’t happen come Sept. 15, they could seize the team and sell it at auction.
