Mark Walter’s insurer plans to cut $7B in lending amid scrutiny

Mark Walter, the billionaire who owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and controls a sprawling insurance empire, is pulling back up to $6.5 billion in lending from his own businesses. The move comes after the Justice Department started asking uncomfortable questions about just how intertwined his insurance companies and personal ventures had become. The core issue is straightforward, even if the numbers are dizzying. Walter’s insurers, primarily Delaware Life Insurance Company and Clear Spring Life and Annuity Company (both subsidiaries of Group 1001 / TWG Global), were lending enormous sums to entities Walter himself controlled. And they apparently weren’t being entirely upfront about it. The disclosure gap that raised alarms Delaware Life initially reported roughly $1.4 billion in related-party investment exposures, representing about 3% of its invested assets. After restatement, that figure ballooned to more than $17 billion. That’s not a rounding error. It means related-party transactions actually accounted for somewhere between 39% and 42% of the insurer’s total invested assets. Across all of Walter’s insurance entities, the total related-party exposure likely exceeds $20 billion. The...