LeBron James Took Nearly $300 Million Loan From Mark Walter-Linked Insurers, Bloomberg Reports

LOS ANGELES —

LeBron James borrowed close to $300 million through a company he controls, using insurers connected to Mark Walter years before Walter ever owned the Los Angeles Lakers, according to insurance records reviewed by Bloomberg.

The money moved through King James Funding, an LLC tied to James, Bloomberg reported. Two insurers based in the Midwest, North American Company for Life and Health Insurance and Midland National Life Insurance Co., both owned by Sammons Financial Group, bought roughly $300 million in previously unreported private bonds, according to Sports Business Journal's summary of the Bloomberg report. That amount was nearly double the $154 million contract James signed with the Lakers in 2018, when he was still playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Loan Behind the Numbers

The original bonds carried a 4.8% interest rate and don't come due until 2049, Bloomberg reported. James paid some of the balance down over the years, but the insurers still held about $245 million by the end of last year. In August 2022, around the time James signed a $97 million extension with the Lakers, the same insurers bought almost $60 million more in bonds maturing over 34 years at a 5.75% rate.

The arrangement let James draw on future income unrelated to basketball, including his lifetime endorsement deal with Nike, as collateral for immediate cash, a structure similar to the Bowie Bonds once built around David Bowie's music royalties. A spokesperson for James described the deals to Bloomberg as a securitization of his personal, non-basketball earnings, called it a common tool for wealthy individuals, and said both transactions were independently credit-rated and that the NBA approved the 2022 deal. The spokesperson said James has no ownership stake in Guggenheim, Sammons, or either insurer.

A Financier's Widening Web

Guggenheim, the investment firm led by Walter, advised the insurers on the purchases, Bloomberg reported. Guggenheim separately invested in James's media company, SpringHill. Walter later built a sports empire that includes the Los Angeles Dodgers and bought controlling interest in the Lakers about a year ago at a $10 billion valuation. He agreed this month to sell that stake to former Disney chief executive Bob Iger and businessman Josh Kushner for $12.5 billion, a deal still awaiting NBA board approval.

Separately, two other Walter-controlled insurers, Delaware Life and Clear Spring, are under review by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission over roughly $20 billion in loans that regulators say should have been disclosed as related-party transactions, according to the Los Angeles Times. Bloomberg reported that Walter has since moved to unwind billions of dollars in affiliated holdings, and the fallout contributed to his decision to sell the Lakers, according to a separate Bloomberg report on his finances.

Bloomberg's reporting found nothing linking the James bonds to that federal investigation. The insurers that financed James are not among those under scrutiny, and the loans predate Walter's Lakers ownership. James left the Lakers this summer and signed with the Philadelphia 76ers.