In a September 1, article in the Los Angeles Times, Bill Shaikin reported that a group headed by Bill Burke offered to purchase the Dodgers for a MLB record of $1.2bn, all in cash. The interesting part of this, from the FCPA perspective, is that some unstated portion of the funding was by Chinese investors, who were only said to be “certain state-owned investment institutions of the People’s Republic of China”. Does that sound like a government owned Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) to you? Shaikin’s article did not report on how much of the $1.2bn bid was funded by this governmental entity as he reported that in addition to the SWF money, there were other ‘unidentified American investors.” So what are the consequences if over 50% of the “all in cash” bid comes from “certain state-owned investment institutions of the People’s Republic of China”?
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