Tom Benson ups ante in proposal to take Saints, Pels out of trust

Tom Benson ups ante

Highlights:

quote:

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Benson’s lawyers also said for the first time this week that the entirety of the teams do not reside in those trusts.

Attorney Paul Cordes said the various trusts contain 95 percent of the shares of Benson Basketball, the holding company for the Pelicans of the NBA. The trusts also contain 60 percent of the shares of Benson Football, the holding company for the NFL’s Saints. The remaining shares are held by Tom Benson, who controls all of the voting shares in both companies.

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quote:

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Benson’s new offer, made Saturday, proposes swapping out the trusts’ ownership shares in the teams and some other assets for secured promissory notes totaling about $449 million, Cordes said. Serving as collateral: the teams themselves, and Zelia LLC and Bensco Inc. — holding companies for Champions Square, Benson Tower and Benson’s five car dealerships.

Benson also is offering to forgive loans he made to the trust in recent years and is throwing in a 50 percent stake in a couple of thousand acres he owns in Texas, plus full ownership of a house on the property, Cordes said. The ranch was included in the Jan. 12 request, he said.

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So the "fact" that he was trying to cheat the trust was untrue and just hyped up junk by Rita's side.

Also, even if he is deemed incompetent they still don't get the voting shares of either team, meaning they'll never have say in how the team is run. They just get to profit off of them.