Teacher's pension plan looking into selling their shares of MLSE

Teacher's pension plan looking into selling their shares of MLSE which is the company that owns the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Toronto Raptors, the Toronto Marlies, Toronto FC, the Air Canada Centre, The Leafs TV, and the NBA TV. The sky is the limit for the price tag on this huge package and 90% of the price tag will be the price to buy the Maple Leafs as they are a good 40 to 50 million dollars of profit if not more as they made a very good profit before the lockout when they spent 90 million dollars a season ( not very smartly at least ). Just imagine the amount of profit the Leafs make on a 60 million dollar salary cap and yes I know they put a big cheque into the hat to support those teams that should not be in the NHL. the Raptors are about 5% of the package because the fans still support the Raptors even when they are so sucky and the Air Canada Centre is about 4% of the package as the centre is package a lot of nights of the year and the concession stands are always hoping and then Toronto FC and the Marlies are just throw ins.

The open offer will be over a billion dollars and could get over 1.5 billion dollars and the most interested partner to buy into MLSE is rumored to be Rogers communication and pension plan have hired Morgan Stanley to find buyers to get the biggest price tag and if he is really wants a team maybe Jim Balsillie but not likely when he has been try to get another hockey team into the area for 300 to 400 million. So it is likely that Bell will get involved in the bidding war against Rogers because Bell would not like to have Rogers controlling all of the Raptors and more importantly the Maple Leafs games (except Saturday night as CBC will continue to have Saturday night Leaf hockey) and I guarantee that if Rogers gets control of MLSE and the teacher's 66% of the shares all of the games will be on Rogers Sportsnet One that Bell customers do not get this channel.

Rogers communication has all the money to make this happen and buy MLSE but just like when Harold Ballard swooped in with the help of banks and bought up the rest of the shares of the Maple Leafs from his partners because he had first dibs on buying the rest of the shares. Now instead of it being Harold Ballard it is Larry Tanenbaum who can match any offer the pension plan gets from anyone and if he is able to come up with the billion and a half dollars through bank loans and favors he will diffidently own the 66% of the team that the pension plan owns as he has always wanted to own MLSE outright. Tanenbaum would own 87% of MLSE and the only other partner left would be TD Capital's 13% in what I would guess would be from a loan or a money grab when Tanenbaum and pension plan put up all the money to build the Air Canada Centre back in the late 90's.

Will see who gets the Pension Plan's shares in MLSE

Tom Mehegan