In the world of Bernie Madoff and Irving Picard, Fred Wilpon is a drop in the proverbial bucket. “We have filed more than 1,000 lawsuits globally, which, in the aggregate, seek to recover approximately $100 billion,” Irving Picard, the trustee for Madoff’s Ponzi victims, told reporters on a telephone conference call this week.
Wilpon’s name is on only one of those lawsuits, and Picard is seeking to recover, at most, only one percent of that amount from Wilpon. Yet when the Madoff mess is mentioned, Wilpon’s name, teamed with that of his business partner and brother-in-law Saul Katz, is the only one you hear.
It doesn’t matter that the trustee has sued HSBC Holdings for $9 billion, JP Morgan Chase for $6.4 billion, the Fairfield Greenwich Group hedge fund for $3.6 billion, Tremont Group money management for $2.1 billion, and UBS money management for $2 billion.
It doesn’t matter that Picard has settled with the estate of Jeffry Picower, who died late in 2009, for $7.2 billion or sued the former general counsel (when he was still the general counsel) of the Securities and Exchange Commission for $1.54 million and sued a 97-year-old former clothing entrepreneur Carl Shapiro for $625 million.
It doesn’t matter that Picard has sued banks all over the world, banks in Argentina, Austria, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain and Luxembourg.
Wilpon is the only Picard defendant anyone talks about. Why?
“What you ask is a terrific question and a question they’ve been asking themselves from the start,” said a person who is involved with Wilpon and Katz, who spoke to them as recently as Wednesday. “There’s no clear answer to that question.”
On the contrary, there is an answer, and the answer is baseball. A few people might find it more interesting to talk about a 97-year-old man who is a Picard defendant or one who died after being sued and whose widow has agreed to return all of the money he collected from the fraudulent scheme.
It might be more interesting, certainly more relevant, to talk about how an S.E.C. lawyer, who should be looking into how a con man can con even the S.E.C., could be in a position to be sued by the lawyer directed to clean up the con man’s mess.
But no one cares about giant financial institutions like HSBC or UBS or JP Morgan Chase. None of us is in their category. Most of us weren’t in any category that would have brought us close enough to Wilpon to induce him to offer to invest our money with Madoff, which is what happened with his childhood friend, Sandy Koufax.
People nevertheless find it fascinating that Wilpon was suckered by another long-time friend. And most of the talk about Wilpon has focused on his resulting financial condition and how it might affect his ability to hold onto the Mets.
Many fans fantasize about being major league players because they all played the game as youngsters and with just a little luck or a little more ability they could have been a backup catcher or a utility infielder in the majors.
In the same state of fantasy, especially the people who are fantasy baseball fans, they think with a few dollars more they could have been team owners. Come to think of it, there are people who own teams who think they can be owners.
When Wilpon put up a “for sale” sign on 25 percent of the Mets earlier this year, there were people who immediately declared publicly, “Count me in.” But the people who go public rarely get the team or the piece of the team they say they want to buy. Most often they don’t even have the money they would need. What they have is a desire for publicity.
In this instance, there seemed to be more cynicism than anything. Cynics instantly scoffed at the idea that people would be willing to pay $250 million, give or take a few million, for a minority share in the team. One former baseball executive said he felt sorry for Steve Greenberg, the Allen and Company managing director, whom Wilpon asked to broker a deal.
Greenberg doesn’t talk about his work, which he has done before, but by the end of the first week of March, he had heard from 12 to 15 legitimate prospective buyers. A quarter interest in the Mets is expected to bring between $200 million and $250 million.
Last year Forbes magazine valued the Mets at $858 million, and the last team that changed hands, the Chicago Cubs, sold for $840 million.
For a while, it seemed that Wilpon might have to add value to what he was selling, either a piece of the team’s cable network, SNY, or in a worst-case scenario, controlling interest in the Mets. Wilpon, however, has held fast to his intention to maintain more than 50 percent.
Why would an individual or a group be willing to spend some hundreds of millions of dollars and not have controlling interest? For some prospective buyers, they could simply have a desire to own a piece of a major league team even if someone else is calling the shots.
But I have a theory that I believe makes a lot of sense. Without knowing what the outcome will be in Wilpon’s legal struggle or settlement negotiations with Picard, it’s possible that Wilpon will be in such dire financial straits that he will be forced to sell the Mets altogether or at least a controlling interest in the team.
Anticipating or gambling on that possibility, some interested buyers may be thinking that if they buy a quarter of the team, they will be in a favorable position to buy the rest if Wilpon decides to sell.
“It would not be unheard of,” a sports banker said, “if somebody were interested in an asset that’s currently not for sale. That’s not an unusual concept to me. But nothing is automatic. No one gets an automatic pass.”
Wilpon has not set a price on the piece of the team he is willing to sell; nor is it definite that he will sell the piece to the highest bidder.
“It may not be so much about price as it is compatibility,” the sports banker said. “He may want to get someone with the right chemistry. The number of interested people gives Wilpon some optionality.”
I need to correct one idea I offered in this space Jan. 30. I suggested that Picard 
could reap so many millions from his recovery efforts, receiving 1.5 percent for everything over $1 billion, that he could buy 25 percent of the Mets.
However, Picard said on his conference call that he does not get such a commission
“I do not get anything,” Picard said in response to my question. “There’s no percentage I get from recoveries.”
Rather, he added, his usual hourly rate is paid by SIPC, the Securities Investment Protection Corporation. He and his New York firm, Baker & Hostetler, submit hourly billings to SIPC, which pays the bills from its reserves. The agency gets its money from assessments levied on all of its Wall Street members.
Picard, then, is not likely to be a bidder for the Mets. That’s probably a good thing. The chemistry would most likely not be very good.