March 28 (Reuters) – He didn’t go to a Major League Baseball
game until he was 20, yet at age 51, Mark Walter is leading the
group buying the Los Angeles Dodgers for a record $2.1 billion.

Walter, CEO of financial services firm Guggenheim Capital
LLC, is the money guy in a disparate consortium that includes
basketball icon entrepreneur Earvin “Magic” Johnson, long-time
baseball executive Stan Kasten and Hollywood heavyweight Peter
Guber.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A group spear-headed by former basketball great Earvin “Magic” Johnson agreed to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team for a record $2 billion, team owner Frank McCourt announced on Tuesday, capping a two-year drama that started with McCourt’s divorce and wound its way through bankruptcy court.

The buyers under the deal, unveiled hours before the storied franchise was scheduled to hold an auction with three bidders, were led by the investment banking firm Guggenheim Partners. Mark R. Walter, chief executive officer of Guggenheim Capital, will be controlling partner of the ownership group.

March 19 (Reuters) – As bidding for the Los Angeles Dodgers
enters its final innings, News Corp’s Fox sports unit
and Time Warner Cable are headed toward what could be a
multi-billion dollar showdown over the rights to telecast the
franchise’s games.

Time Warner, which announced an agreement last year
to launch a pair of cable channels with the Los Angeles Lakers
pro basketball team, has been talking with bidders still
involved in the Dodgers sale, according to two sources with
knowledge of the process.

By Ronald Grover and Sue Zeidler

(Reuters) – The legal fisticuffs between Steve Wynn and Kazuo Okada, Wynn Resorts’ largest shareholder, escalated further as Okada counter sued in U.S. federal court, alleging that the casino company’s board breached its fiduciary duties and violated racketeering laws by voting to redeem Okada’s shares.

Okada “disputes that any redemption has occurred,” the Japanese businessman said in his suit, which also alleges that Wynn Resorts “under took a secret investigation” to force him off the board and “committed a series of predicate acts of racketeering, which include fraud.”

LOS ANGELES, March 9 (Reuters) – Bidders for the Los
Angeles Dodgers are heading to Arizona for meetings early next
week to be vetted by Major League Baseball, ahead of the next
and third round of bids due around next Friday, three sources
familiar with the matter said.

Former Los Angeles Lakers star Magic Johnson, hedge-fund
billionaire Steve Cohen, St Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke and
media executive Leo Hindery are among an estimated seven parties
who remain in the bidding. Sources have said the bids are
between $1.2 billion and $1.6 billion.

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Wynn Resorts Ltd (WYNN.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), locked in a legal battle with one-time largest shareholder Kazuo Okada, won its first legal skirmish.

A Nevada state judge ordered Wynn Resorts to turn over only two pages of the many pages of documents that Okada’s team had requested for a lawsuit related to a $135 million contribution by the Las Vegas casino to the University of Macau.

LAS VEGAS, March 8 (Reuters) – Wynn Resorts Ltd
, locked in a legal battle with one-time largest
shareholder Kazuo Okada, has set a special shareholder meeting
for late April or early May to try to oust the Japanese
businessman from its board, the company said in court documents
filed in Las Vegas.

Lawyers for both sides convened in a Nevada courtroom on
Thursday for a hearing on a lawsuit filed by Okada that seeks
access to financial records around a large donation by the
casino company to a Macau university – a gift he says was
inappropriate.

March 7 (Reuters) – Wynn Resorts Ltd and its
one-time largest shareholder, Japanese billionaire Kazuo Okada,
have established battle lines for their latest skirmish.

The Las Vegas casino company plans to convene a special
meeting of its shareholders to try and jettison Okada from its
board. The pachinko and slot-machine mogul, for his part, is
suing to gain access to the company’s financial records and his
lawyers will square off against Wynn’s in a Vegas court on
Thursday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Wynn Resorts Ltd (WYNN.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) retracted an announcement that it had advanced a major project in Macau, saying it had been made in error after its shares surged on the news.

The stock, halted after that initial run-up, resumed trade shortly after and closed up 4.27 percent at $127.27.

By Sue Zeidler

(Reuters) – Eastman Kodak Co has agreed to sell its online photo services business to Shutterfly Inc for $23.8 million, kicking off the bankrupt photography pioneer’s relaunch as a much slimmer company although a patent sale seen crucial to its turnaround may still be months away.

The once-iconic company that invented the hand-held camera has said it will quit the camera business and is expected to fetch $1 billion to $2 billion from the sale of about 1,100 digital patents, which is due to get under way by June 30.