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[Report] Islanders Owner Wang Sued for Failing to Sell Team


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http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=459215

New York Islanders owner Charles Wang has been served with a $10 million lawsuit on Monday by Andrew Barroway for failing to sell his team to Barroway's NY ICE corporation for $420 million, reports the New York Daily News.

According to papers filed at Manhattan Supreme Court, Barroway had a "handshake agreement" with Wang for the sale of the team to NY ICE in March and the company had already began to look for financing and NHL approval.

Barroway claims that "without notice, [Wang] abruptly refused to proceed to close the transaction and honor the terms of their 70-page purchase agreement, but instead improperly sought to renegotiate the already agreed upon price" and demanded an increased figure of $548 million by midway through the summer.

The suit alleges that Wang experienced "seller's remorse" after seeing the sum of money that Donald Sterling was to receive for the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers. On August 1st, Wang informed NY ICE of his intentions to sell the team to another party.

Barroway's papers claim that "NY ICE is entitled to the $10 million 'break up' fee to which the parties agreed" or to at least be reimbursed for all costs involved.

The Islanders released no comment on the matter.

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If I was an Isle fan I'd certainly like to see what another owner(s) could have done with the club. When I first became interested in hockey I caught the tail end of their glory days and it is a shame that things have fallen so far since then.

Haven't really seen such a decline since...well...maybe the Oil, but that is a different sort of animal for a different thread.

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How did this guy make money? He can't even sell a hockey team correctly.

He's the co-founder of Computer Associates a $12.5 billion dollar company.

His problem is he thinks his skill set translates well to hockey and it doesn't. He should realize that he's a software guy and not a GM. For example, he wanted to give Mike Peca a 10 year deal.

This case is cut and dry. He owes Barroway the $10m break up fee.

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His team if he doesn't want to sell it then he doesn't need to.

Same as sterling... People don't understand. You can't force someone to sell a company.

Hope he doesn't get fined a penny as he shouldn't.

That's all fine and dandy, except for the part where he signed a 70-page contract document saying he intended to sell the team to them, and it included a $10 million penalty if he backed out. I don't see how you can argue he shouldn't have to pay it.

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It's not in his DNA to accept a deal that doesn't benefit him more than the other party.

Yeah he sounds like a real tightwad.

Wang is an active philanthropist and in 1999 established the Charles B. Wang Foundation with the goal of donating to numerous charities that focused on bettering the lives of children and the disenfranchised. He has worked with such causes as Smile Train, the World Childhood Foundation, the Plainview Chinese Cultural Center and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, among others. His donation of over $50 million to the State University of New York at Stony Brook for the construction of the Charles B. Wang Center was, at the time, the largest in history to a SUNY school. He also funded the expansion of the Chinatown Health Clinic which was renamed the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center.

As the co-Founder and Chairman of Smile Train in 1999, Mr. Wang originally gave $30 million to cover all administrative expenses and has remained active in the charity’s efforts to help children with cleft lip and palates, in more than 80 countries

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That's all fine and dandy, except for the part where he signed a 70-page contract document saying he intended to sell the team to them, and it included a $10 million penalty if he backed out. I don't see how you can argue he shouldn't have to pay it.

Says it was a handshake agreement so technically Wang didn't sign anything even though the 70-page document is there.
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Says it was a handshake agreement so technically Wang didn't sign anything even though the 70-page document is there.

It doesn't say the document wasn't signed. You don't write a 70-page sales agreement and not have both parties sign it.

I'm pretty sure the term "handshake agreement" was just a figure of speech in this case.

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It doesn't say the document wasn't signed. You don't write a 70-page sales agreement and not have both parties sign it.

I'm pretty sure the term "handshake agreement" was just a figure of speech in this case.

If the document was signed, lawyers would have referred to document as such rather than use ambiguous terms.

A verbal agreement, if it can be proven to have occurred, is the same thing as signing the document itself. The only challenge is actually proving that the verbal agreement was made.

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