MLB
Who is Mark Walter? Los Angeles Dodgers owner and Guggenheim Partners CEO
With the 2024 MLB World Series about to get underway, let’s get to know a little more about Mark Walter, one of the co-owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Dodgers are back in the Major League Baseball World Series for what will be their 22nd appearance in the the annual championship series and the 12th time that they have contested the title with the Yankees.
Four years after their last triumph, Dave Roberts’ team is back in search of another baseball title, a situation that would not be possible without the investment of the owners, led by Mark Walter, CEO of Guggenheim Partners.
Mark Walter’s sports investments
Walter has owned the Los Angeles franchise since 2012, when the Guggenheim Partners group, which includes former NBA player Magic Johnson and Chelsea owner Todd Boehly, bought half of the shares of the Californian team.
In this way, the Guggenheim Partners team, made up of: Mark Walter, Peter Guber, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Stan Kasten, Todd Boehly, Bobby Patton and most recently, tennis legend Billie Jean King, acquired the team for $2.15 billion.
Walter is also the co-owner of Premier League club Chelsea. In May 2022, BlueCo, a consortium led by American investor Todd Boehly and private equity firm Clearlake Capital bought the club for $3 billion (Boehly, Walter and Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss hold a 38.5 percent stake in shares). A year later, BlueCo secured a controlling stake in French Ligue 1 club RC Strasbourg for a reported $90 million.
As for his personal life, Walter is married to Kimbra, an attorney and philanthropist who is actively involved in several charitable causes, including TWF Causes which focuses on conservation, social equity and education. The couple reside in Chicago with their daughter, Samantha.
According to the prestigious Forbes magazine, Walter currently has a fortune of around $6 billion dollars, mainly from the Guggenheim Partners group.
Guggenheim Partners is a financial services firm with more than $325 billion in assets, headquartered in Chicago and New York City, 2,300 employees and 25 offices in six countries around the world.
Walter and Friedman, the men behind Ohtani’s signing
Although all of the above are partners and co-owners of the Dodgers, Walter and Andrew Friedman, president of baseball operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers, were the key men in Ohtani’s arrival to the Dodgers.
Friedman joined the Dodgers in 2015, and under his leadership, the Los Angeles team has won a total of eight National League West pennants, in addition to reaching the World Series three times, winning in 2020.
The Dodgers are looking for their eighth World Series title, and will play Game 1 this Friday when they face the New York Yankees.