Thomas Lauria already had his hands full with a major bit of work–the $1.6 billion bankruptcy of Six Flags Inc.–when Chuck Greenberg called in June 2010. Greenberg, a Reed Smith sports attorney who has interests in such minor league baseball teams as the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, was looking to buy the Texas Rangers, along with Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan. Greenberg had hit some snags in his fight to purchase the franchise. “He thinks he’s losing his deal,” Lauria says, describing his initial conversation with Greenberg. “He’s invested the last nine months of his life in trying to buy the Texas Rangers–it’s his dream. And I have to admit I was skeptical about getting the deal done. It sounded like they were headed off a cliff.”
Lauria, the global practice head of White & Case’s restructuring and insolvency group, was coming in at the tail end of Rangers owner Tom Hicks’s roughly yearlong effort to sell the team, whose parent company was $525 million in debt.
