Celebrity manager Loring Ward sells NFL business

Thomas Coyle

23 February 2005

Canadian wealth management company wants off the red carpet and into the mainstream. Canadian wealth management company Loring Ward International is selling Maximum Sports Management to the firm’s senior executives. The move is part of Loring Ward’s on-going efforts to soften its reliance on sports and celebrity management and enter the mainstream of the U.S. ultra high-net-worth business.

Roanoke, Ind.-based Maximum Sports represents “a significant client list” of National Football League players, says Loring Ward. Under the terms of the deal Maximum Sports’ senior management will take over the operations of its existing business, assume all operating costs associated with the practice; and collect all revenue the business is entitled to over the remaining life of existing player contracts. No other details of the transaction were disclosed.

The sale “makes sense for all concerned, and will allow us to continue to increase our investment in those businesses that represent the highest prospect of growth for the company," says Martin Weinberg, chairman of Winnipeg, Manitoba-based Loring Ward.

Loring Ward is in varying stages of sale talks with its three remaining sports-management firms – Moorad Sports, M.D. Gillis & Associates and Fegan & Associates – “and will continue to operate them until such time as further determinations may be made,” the company says.

Before the Maximum Sports sale was made public in mid February, Kishore Kapoor, Loring Ward’s executive v.p. for corporate development, told FWR that his company was “certainly among the top three” sports agencies in North America. But he added that he and Weinberg were keen to make a bigger name for the company as a core financial service provider to ultra high-net-worth clients and their advisors through its asset management, family office and advisor service businesses. As a result, Loring Ward is also taking a hard look at its entertainment and music industry businesses.

Kapoor also mentioned the frustrations of advising rich young athletes. “These guys are 22 years old and they think they’re going to live forever,” he said. “Sometimes it’s difficult to get them to focus on estate planning.”

Late last year in a move calculated to advance Loring Ward’s operational transition to becoming a U.S.-based wealth manager, the company selected Donald Herrema to succeed Weinberg as president and CEO. Herrema, former CEO of Atlantic Trust and Bessemer Trust, now has responsibility for the overall management of Loring Ward, and for enhancing its presence in the U.S. marketplace, improving recruitment and acquisition opportunities, and strengthening the management of all of the company's core business interests. He runs Loring Ward out of New York.

Loring Ward’s move into the U.S. market won’t mean a move from Winnipeg for the firm’s founders, however. “We’ve built our lives and raised our families here,” Kapoor tells FWR. “Real estate is very cheap and we like it.” And once he feels the company has established itself in the U.S. market, Kapoor says he’ll step down. -FWR