In the sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Monday - today, this Monday right now - is a deadline. It's a "soft" deadline, but it's a deadline nonetheless. It's a deadline for prospective buyers to submit their opening bids. According to Tim Brown, the first bids started arriving at Blackstone Advisory Partners over the weekend. Things are heating up.
How are things heating up? What does any of this actually mean? That's where Bill Shaikin comes in. In this article from the Los Angeles Times, Shaikin answers a handful of key questions about the process. For example, what is a soft deadline?
What happens Monday?
Opening bids are due. The deadline is a soft one, meaning a well-capitalized prospective buyer would not necessarily be rejected for submitting a bid after Monday. Blackstone Advisory Partners, the investment bank handling the sale for McCourt, is prepared to receive about 20 bids.
So Monday is a deadline in that it is not really a deadline.* Got it.
* it's more of a woundedline. haha!
What happens next, once the bids are in?
What happens from there?
The bids are not binding. However, in addition to a proposed purchase price, the bid should outline how the ownership group would be structured and how the purchase price would be financed. Blackstone will use all that information to decide which bidders will continue in the process.
In all, Shaikin addresses ten questions, and he addresses them in plain, understandable English, making this an easier article to read about the Dodgers sale than most. It's worth a few minutes of your day, if this is an area of personal interest. If it's not, you should probably do something else.