SunTrust buys naming rights to new Braves stadium (Atlanta, Rome: homes, inspector)

[jsvh]

Braves new world: tax avoidance meets brand rehab | www.myajc.com

I went to Turner Field Wednesday for the first time this year with some friends. We penciled in the date weeks ago because it looked like the Braves might be in the thick of a playoff race.

However, the previous night, the Washington Nationals celebrated in Turner Field as division champs, and the prospect of a wild card berth was as improbable as a B.J. Upton hitting streak. (The Braves were eliminated from playoff contention Sunday.)

Washington Nationals celebrated at Turner Field after they won the NL East last week.
Somehow, it was fitting that the embarrassment of watching their rivals dance on their diamond came on the same day the Braves broke ground on the new ball field they are building 12 miles up I-75 in Cobb County.

I was a part of a season ticket group for about 15 years, from 1993, when Braves Fever was infectious, until about 2009, when the charm had worn off.

...

In 2006, Time Warner wanted out of baseball. John Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media, was looking to get rid of $1.8 billion worth of Time Warner stock without paying taxes on it. So Time Warner handed over the Braves, then worth about $460 million, and $1.4 billion in cash to Liberty in return for the stock.

“Liberty is expected to … (save) more than $600 million in taxes,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

“When else can you sell a highly appreciated asset for cash and never pay tax?” a Lehman Bother’s tax guru enthused to the WSJ. “What more could you want from a technique? It’s not like you’re deferring the tax on the cash; you’re permanently avoiding it. It’s fantastic.”

In essence, Malone got a free Major League Baseball team and $140 million in cash for his trouble. It was indeed fantastic.

The Braves went from being a big spender in the glory days of the 1990s under Ted Turner to just another mid-market team bumping along, throwing nickels around like they were manhole covers. They were just bit players to a Colorado-based, tax-avoiding colossus.

Of course, Liberty doesn’t avoid receiving tax money.

Late last year, as the company wrapped up a year in which its operating income increased to $814 million, representatives of its baseball asset convened in top-secret meetings with representatives of Cobb County.

Cobb is a conservative county, and its leaders don’t like taxes much, either. In fact they don’t like taxes so much that they promised to give The Liberty Media Braves up to nearly $400 million in future tax money to build a stadium.

Stadiums no longer have quaint names like Fenway or Comiskey or Three Rivers. Instead they are marketing synergies

Banks increasingly join up with major league teams because it allows them to appear major league, and it catches people at a time when they are happy and engaged.

SunTrust could use some image rehab. In June the bank was hit with $968 million in fines and consumer payouts as it settled with the government over allegations of abusive mortgage practices.

Attorney General Eric Holder said, “SunTrust’s conduct is a prime example of the widespread underwriting failures that helped bring about the financial crisis.”

SunTrust’s chief, Rogers, was “pleased to have resolved these legacy mortgage settlements.”

Weeks later, in July, SunTrust agreed to pay up to $320 million to settle a criminal investigation looking into how it handled homeowners seeking loan modifications during the financial meltdown.

Christy Romero, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, was apparently so angered by SunTrust’s “slipshod and negligent administration” that she put out a statement about how the bank handled the Home Affordable Modification Program.

“Unwilling to put resources into HAMP despite holding billions in TARP funds, SunTrust simply placed piles of unopened homeowners’ HAMP applications and paperwork on an office floor until at one point, the floor buckled under the sheer weight of the document packages. Documents and paperwork were lost. SunTrust issued ‘mass denials’ to HAMP applicants and lied to the Treasury Department about the reasons for the denials.”

“The negligence which Sun Trust administered its HAMP is appalling, miserable, inexcusable and repulsive,” she continued. “Real people lost their homes and many others faced financial ruin.”

Play ball!

[Gulch]

The Marietta Daily Journal - New stadium new name

Cobb County and the Atlanta Braves gained a stadium Tuesday, and the stadium
gained a name. Not bad for a morning’s work.

The long-awaited groundbreaking took place Tuesday for the team’s 41,500 seat stadium, which will cost $672 million and is due to be ready for opening day of the 2017 season. Not only is the project one of the most expensive in Cobb history, it’s also one of the biggest, with work already well underway on the sprawling 60-acre site between Interstate 75 and Cobb Parkway just south of Windy Ridge
Parkway.

“This (stadium) will do for Cobb County what the original Fulton County Stadium did (in 1965) and what Hartsfield Airport did for Atlanta and bring the spotlight to Cobb County,” declared Cobb Commission Chairman Tim Lee during his remarks at the groundbreaking, which drew an RSVP crowd of close to 750 people. Among them were Braves’ brass, legendary retired Braves slugger “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron and Major League Baseball Commissioner-elect Rob Manfred.

“I think you’re going to end up with a ballpark that produces a fan experience that is second to none in Mayor League baseball,” he told the crowd, referencing not just the park but the elaborate “fan plaza” being built simultaneously next door by the Braves.

[arc-lang]

Frank Wren was fired today. Looks like Liberty Media was still paying attention to us poor bastards down here. At least now we know why Wren was excluded from that whole groundbreaking thingy.

[DawgPark]

Originally Posted by arc-lang

Frank Wren was fired today. Looks like Liberty Media was still paying attention to us poor bastards down here. At least now we know why Wren was excluded from that whole groundbreaking thingy.

Good 1st move. Freddy needs to be next.

None of the Braves, Suntrust, Cobb, Mixed-Use, etc matters if you put a losing team on the field.

[SAAN]

Im sure Suntrust Park or White Flight Park or what ever its called will be quite nice, yet provide us the same Braves team that lets us down every October.

[alco89]

Originally Posted by arc-lang

Frank Wren was fired today. Looks like Liberty Media was still paying attention to us poor bastards down here. At least now we know why Wren was excluded from that whole groundbreaking thingy.

Liberty Media had nothing to do with the firing.

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Braves new world: tax avoidance meets brand rehab | www.myajc.com

wow...that's disturbing. But it seems to be becoming the norm in this post-Citizens United nation.

[Mishap]

Originally Posted by toll_booth

wow...that's disturbing. But it seems to be becoming the norm in this post-Citizens United nation.

To be fair, the Braves deal is legal regardless of Citizens United (and it actually happened before the case). It's but another case of corporations taking every thing they can and lobbying for more. Citizen's United merely asserted that Liberty as a corporation and a fictional person has the ability to utilize money (acquired from taxpayers or actual commerce) as free speech to influence politics.

[magnetar]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Braves new world: tax avoidance meets brand rehab | www.myajc.com

Man, Liberty and SunTrust are two peas in a pod, aren't they.

[arc-lang]

Originally Posted by alco89

Liberty Media had nothing to do with the firing.

I was being facetious. Just an attempt at humor and to pretend that someone in the faceless ownership still cares about the fans want.