Aubrey McClendon leveraged everything he owned (inc OKC Thunder) to finance deal

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He was known for helping bring a National Basketball Association team to the city as well as showering his hometown with gifts and investments in charities, neighborhoods and retail centers.

Mr. McClendon had pledged as collateral assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars as he sought to finance a comeback following his 2013 ouster as chief executive of Chesapeake. From oil properties to a piece of the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team to a 2,000-bottle fine-wine collection to stakes in tech startups, he had a broad set of investments to leverage as he looked to raise capital.
ut his plans for building a new oil-and-gas empire that sprawled from Ohio to Australia ran into major headwinds in the year before his death, as the price of crude oil and natural gas plunged.

Mr. McClendon lost his grip on some of his assets, as longtime financial backers and even friends stopped investing in what he tried to assure them would be a lucrative second act, according to public documents and interviews with more than a dozen personal and professional associates of Mr. McClendon.

Filings made the same day show he also pledged the cash proceeds from his roughly 20% stake in the NBA’s Thunder to Oaktree Capital Group LLC, a Los Angeles investment firm that specializes in distressed assets. Bank of America Corp. previously held his Thunder stake as collateral, records show.

The Thunder ownership is pledged in such a way that Oaktree can only receive the full value of its worth if it is sold, according to a person familiar with the matter.

He also put up real estate in Connecticut, Colorado and Oklahoma as well as collections of antique oil-and-gas paraphernalia and boats, including one from 1897 and a 1929 Chris Craft, and some 2,000 bottles of wine, among them 18 bottles of 1949 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, worth thousands of dollars apiece.

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