A bizarre offer from former Duke and Minnesota Timberwolves basketball player Brian Davis came at the last minute after Dan Snyder and the Washington leaders agreed to sell the team to Josh Harris and his investment group for just over $6 billion.
Davis claims to offer Snyder $7 billion in cash, with the first billion arriving within 24 hours of the deal being approved and the remainder within seven days, According to WUSA9. No offer, including the Harris investment group offer, cannot be terminated even after it has been accepted until the owners approve the deal in a vote, which is expected to come at the owner’s meeting in Minneapolis from May 22-24.
This makes any offer Snyder accepts a non-exclusive offer, which allows other potential buyers to submit their bids if those bids meet their needs. According to the report, Bank of America has engaged other bidders to see if they will move forward with their bids.
Davis also offers to compensate Snyder, which means that Davis and the leaders will assume any legal liability that Snyder has for any actions involving the leaders. Strangely enough — the NFL denied Snyder’s request for compensation in February, and no other owner has reportedly offered that clause.
That’s not all that strange.
Who is Brian Davis?
Davis played a crucial role in Duke Basketball’s 1991 and 1992 championship runs, first as a role player with over 20 minutes a game, then as a rookie with over 30 minutes a game. He was a second round pick to the Phoenix Suns before being traded to the Timberwolves, where for one season he only played 5.5 minutes per game.
Davis grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, before attending Duke on a basketball scholarship and settling in the Washington, D.C. area after his basketball career.
What is Brian Davis’ business background?
He and fellow Duke student Christian Laettner have been involved in a number of business ventures together after his basketball career, which is where the questions first start to arise. It’s not entirely clear how Davis accumulated enough cash — or assets to be flipped for cash — to pitch for an NFL team.
Laettner and Davis have been subject to civil investigation several times in connection with their business ventures. In 2006, Leitner and Davis attempted to buy the Memphis Grizzlies for $252 million, securing loans from a number of investors, including Scottie Pippen. This deal did not materialize, and Pippen sued them to get his money back afterwards Pay off only about half of the loan.
This was not Leitner and Davis’ only project in team ownership. In 2007, together with several others, they founded DC United Holdings, which bought the rights to DC United, the MLS team, for $ 33 million. Davis and Leitner were minority owners. In May of 2009, 98 percent of the company was sold to majority shareholder Will Chang, with the remaining 2 percent owned by Davis and Leitner, who sold their interest in October of that year. Chang went on to sell the team’s stock in 2012 and 2016 at valuations of $50 million.
In all likelihood, this resulted in a payout of less than $1 million to the two combined for their ownership interest in DC United Holdings.
Brian Davis has been sued for non-payment of loans several times
In 2007, they were sued over a $200,000 loan they settled out of court for a loan they took out as part of their real estate venture, Blue Devil Ventures (BDV).
In 2009, JD Holdings sued BDV with both Davis and Laettner for breach of contract after JD Holdings loaned JD Holdings $500,000 to develop real estate in Baltimore, Maryland. They did not repay the loan after it was extended, and both Davis and Leitner personally guaranteed the loan.
Neither Davis nor Laettner appeared in court after the termination, and J.D. Holdings personally commissioned them to settle the debt, now $671,000, with the two agreeing to repay the loan as part of the terms of the settlement. They failed to fulfill these conditions and were taken to court again and failed to appear again. They hardly Avoid jail time for contempt of court.
This lawsuit is separate from the other filed against them in 2009 involving former NFL player Shawn Merriman, who alleged that the duo stopped making payments on a loan they took from him in 2007.
At some point, Leitner and Davis formed a second company, BDV III, as part of a second investment group with other real estate tycoons.
The centerpiece of their real estate ventures was a series of properties in downtown Durham, North Carolina, called the West Village, which may have been used to secure their loans. One feature It has been vacant for years before selling for less than $10 million. This would constitute a loss, because they originally paid $11.1 million for the property and then took out a second loan of similar value.
Other properties in the West Village also incurred significant debt, and they had It defaulted on a $26 million loan in 2006 regarding those properties.
In 2016, Laettner sued his company — BDV III — to recover additional assets from the sale, and he personally had Four times the debt he had in assets.
Outside of BDV, Davis has continued to invest in real estate and, in 2016, committed to developing a property in Atlantic City, his hometown, In mixed use green development With retail stores and at least 600 rental units and a boardwalk. Davis noted that the fastest development timeline would see it launch within six months of purchase.
The real estate deals of Brian Davis are opaque
As of November 2021, five years later, There are no visual indicators From any development on the waterfront property described. Lots on Riverside and Route 30, a stone’s throw from Harrah’s and many of the windmills are empty. There are no clear rental listings or high occupancy dwellings listed for the property either.
This 2016 purchase is the first mention of the company name similar to what was reported in a WUSA9 story about Davis’ potential purchase, the Urban Echo. However, WUSA9’s story points to a different company, Urban Echo Energy. There are a number of companies filing under the Urban Echo name in New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, with eight entities registered as “Urban Echo Energy” in Delaware and one more in Virginia.
All eight Delaware entities formed earlier this year, while the Virginia entity formed last year.
There are very few stories in newspaper archives that mention the company by name or in connection with Davis prior to this latest report, which makes it all the more strange that a WUSA9 report indicates that investors “realised” that Davis had $50 billion in assets. Name in the form of company assets and intellectual property.
The fact that Davis made a cash-in offer in two installments is unusual, since such deals don’t usually come with completely liquid assets.
If Davis sells his company’s stock at a certain price, he can certainly “earn” a valuation after the sale is submitted—suggesting that the company could be worth several billion dollars in total. But the NFL and Bank of America will have to determine whether or not these shares were bought at serious valuation or if the price was manipulated in some way.
The worst outcome would be if Snyder himself found a way to encourage a parade that overvalued the leaders and offered them compensation, though there is no evidence that Snyder or anyone associated with him ever did such a thing.
The report also notes that Davis intends to introduce green development operations in his leadership bid, with support from his company. More reports of WUSA9 indicates that Urban Echo Energy is LEED certified, although this and similar names do not appear in the directory of the U.S. Green Building Council, which administers LEED certification for projects and organizations.
Finally, this is an unusual offer, and it would be surprising if the NFL or Bank of America agreed to the deal. In any case, getting an official offer would allow the NFL to review the financials in more detail and audit Davis’ solvency.
This may have happened before, with President Donald Trump possibly involved in the most famous incident. The NFL turned down an offer from Trump when he offered to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014, and testimony later from attorney Michael Cohen indicated Trump had Inflated the value of his assets In order to secure financing for the deal, his net worth swelled from $4.6 billion in 2012 to $8.7 billion in 2013.
While rejecting Davis’ potential deal wouldn’t carry the same narrative weight as Trump’s, it’s entirely possible that something similar may have played a role.
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