Bankruptcy is Called Off 

A bankruptcy action against Laurel Park and Pimlico race tracks has been called off. Magna Entertainment Corp’s parent company is going to purchase their Maryland assets – which includes the Maryland Jockey Club. The assets were going to be sold at auction on Thursday after the process had been postponed many times. However, they said that the deal was having a hard time going through because they were unable to get someone to bid successfully on the property. 

So they have taken another stance, where the parent company has entered into an agreement with the creditors of the tracks where they are going to take over those assets and pay them back a portion of what they are owed. They are going to pay them $89 million instead of the $79 million that they had been previously offered. In exchange, they are dropping the lawsuit against the company. 

PNC will get the initial $20 million that comes out of the proceeds from the sale, and MID will pay $13 million to ensure that claim. The former owners – the De Francis family – will get more in terms of a settlement because they were supposed to get a portion of the auction amount. They will get an additional $1 million now from the restructuring of the company. They said that they were disappointed and that part of the reason they had reached a settlement with them was because of the money that they expected to get from the auction. They said that the deal would have gone differently otherwise.