Angelos Joins Jeff Seder in Maryland Bid

Blow Horn Equity LLC, headed by Jeff Seder, who founded and runs the bloodstock advisory firm EQB, Inc., has just announced that Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos and family will be joining forces with Blow Horn Equity to bid for the Maryland Jockey Club properties now owned by Magna Entertainment. The auction is scheduled for January 8th in federal bankruptcy court.

According to a press release issued this afternoon, the joint Blow Horn Equity - Angelos family bid will go forward despite the ongoing uncertainty over whether the slot machine license earmarked for Anne Arundel County, where Laurel Park is located, will be awarded to developer David Cordish's Arundel Mills shopping center, just up the road from Laurel. The slots license had been intended for Laurel, but Magna generalissimo Frank Stronach decided he could ignore the rules and didn't pony up the required deposit with his application. As a result, the state had no choice but to accept the competing bid from Cordish, a decision that has now been confirmed by the Anne Arundel county government.

While the bidders would certainly like to have the slots decision overturned -- and Angelos is a prominent player in Maryland Democratic circles -- they say the bid is based on racing, not slot machines. Of course, the MJC properties -- Laurel, Pimlico and the Bowie training center -- are worth a lot less without the operator's share of the slots revenue.

Angelos is a Baltimore trial lawyer who got rich representing plaintiffs in major asbestos, tobacco and diet-pill cases. In 1993, he led the investor group that purchased the Baltimore Orioles, and in 1998 he bought the 237-acre Ross Valley Farm in Baltimore County for his thoroughbred breeding and racing operation.

With Angelos' financial muscle, plus the private equity funds pulled together by Jeff Seder in Blow Horn Equity, the group seems in position to make a credible bid at the bankruptcy auction.

Let's hope so; they're the only potential bidders I can see who actually know something about racing.