Authur Blank’s career has been predicated on local business and philanthropy. When it came time to expand the Falcons’ ownership group, he went to the same bolt of cloth.
And should the need ever arise for some gridiron discipline in the owners box, he has also added a Joe Paterno-coached Penn State football player.
Blank, the team’s majority owner, announced Tuesday that he has sold minority shares of the Falcons to Douglas J. Hertz, Ed Mendel, Derek V. Smith and Ronald E. Canakaris, subject to approval by the National Football League.
Negotiations were lengthy. Falcons president Rich McKay represented the team’s interests while the investor group was represented by attorney Tyler Dempsey of Troutman and Sanders, LLP.
“I think we are all very excited about it,” said Hertz, president of Smyrna-based United Distributors Inc. and the leader of a fund-raising effort to create Camp Twin Lakes, which provides summer camp for special needs children. “From my perspective, it’s a wonderful delight.”
Neither side would reveal the percentage of the shares purchased or the amount paid, citing the respective private agreements. Blank however will retain 90 percent control and has no plans to sell the team.
He purchased the Falcons for $545 million in 2002. The franchise was valued at $872 million — 29th out of 32 NFL teams — by Forbes magazine in its annual NFL rankings last September.
The Falcons are following a league-wide trend of increasing their ownership partners. Recently, the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers added three new partners, including hall of fame wide receiver John Stallworth.
Hertz has been a Falcons season ticket holder since the inception of the team in 1965 and has been a friend of Blank’s for the almost 25 years.
“Hopefully, I’ll get a lot of pleasure out of the side benefits,” Hertz said. “But I’m really looking at it as a long-term business investment for my family.”
Hertz, who was designated as the spokesperson for the group, said the deal took about six to nine months to finalize.
“The NFL puts you through quite a process,” Hertz said. “I’ve never been through or have I seen such a background check for what is not a small investment for me, but it is a small investment from the entire perspective. That took a little bit of time.”
Smith, who played wide receiver for Paterno at Penn State in the mid-1970s, is the chairman and chief executive officer of the Institute of Global Prescience. He’s the former chairman and chief executive officer of ChoicePoint, Inc.
In February of 2008, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Smith had cut a profitable and controversial path for his Alpharetta-based company from its 1997 founding to the announcement of its planned sale to Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier for $4.1 billion.
He had an avant-garde approach to old-school corporate culture and was known to show up in the office sockless.
Based on Reed Elsevier’s $50-a-share purchase price, Smith’s ChoicePoint shares were expected to be worth more than $46 million, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings at the time. He received a degree in computer sciences from Penn State and a master’s from Georgia Tech.
Smith is currently a trustee of Myfifdent Foundation and serves on the boards of the Georgia Aquarium, Hands on Network/Points of Light Institute and Camp Twin Lakes.
Canakaris started his career in 1973 at Montag & Caldwell, a local investment management services company, as a portfolio manager and climbed up through the ranks to become chairman and chief investment officer. He is a graduate of the University of Florida.
Mendel is co-founder of the Ned Davis Research Group, a finance strategy research firm, and the brokerage Davis, Mendel & Regenstein, Inc., as well as president of The Mendel Foundation.
He sponsors the Young Angels Camp Scholarship Fund and serves as a Life Trustee at the Marcus Jewish Community Center.
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