Who Are the Twins’ New Limited Partners?

The Minnesota Twins have settled their ownership situation. Three new limited partners are joining the Pohlad family, who will retain majority ownership of the team, with Tom Pohlad taking over for his brother Joe and uncle Jim as the Executive Chair and Control Person.

The three new limited partners joining the Pohlad Family are Glick Family Investments, based in New York City, George G. Hicks, co-founder of Värde Partners and a Minnesota native, and Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold.

“We’ve got a New York family, the Glick family, who are really smart investors,” said Tom Pohlad during a press conference on Wednesday. “But they’re very collaborative, and they’re very patient, they’re long-term oriented.”

“The Minnesota group is a collection of really experienced business people,” he continued. “Great track record of success, strong community ties, but most importantly, most of them are lifelong Twins fans, and they care passionately about this team, and they believe in what we can build going forward.”

Leipold is the most familiar of these names, because he has owned the Wild since 2008. Leipold, 73, will invest his own money, separate from his ownership stake in the Wild. Leipold has gained a reputation for investing in the Wild’s roster, signing star left wing Kirill Kaprizov to an eight-year, $136 million contract extension ahead of the 2025-26 season.

Leipold was among the later parties involved in the limited partner discussions, according to Tom Pohlad. The Pohlad family had been in touch with other professional sports owners in the Twin Cities market throughout the process to better understand what they do well, and Leipold was the one whom they gravitated towards adding.

“Actually, before we announced the sale, Craig and I had gotten to know each other,” said Pohlad. “That relationship just came about by trying to connect to other sports owners in our market and understand what they’re doing well. But Craig is going to be a great adviser. He and I have developed a relationship. He’s become a friend.”

The other Minnesota partner, Hicks, grew up just eight miles from the South Dakota border in Pipestone, Minn., and is a 1975 graduate from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter.

Hicks is a co-founder and has served as executive chair of Värde Partners, a global credit specialist based in Minneapolis, and previously served as a vice president for Cargill Financial. He also owns a minority stake in the Minnesota Timberwolves. As reported by the Star Tribune, Hicks is also partnering with the Twins’ Low-A affiliate, Fort Myers Mighty Mussels owner John Martin, for his ownership stake with the Twins.

“As a lifelong Twins fan, I am honored and excited to join the Pohlad family as a steward of this beloved franchise,” said Hicks in a statement. “Like many in the state, some of my favorite memories are of times spent watching and cheering for the Twins. The leaders I represent share these values and recognize the importance of Twins baseball to our communities.”

Finally, there’s Glick Family Investments, which has the least publicly available information about itself. In the Twins’ press release, they said the Glick Family Investments are “a multi-generational family office that takes a long-term, value-creation approach. The family focuses on making direct investments in high-quality businesses across a broad range of asset classes.”

“Though they’re from New York, by the way, they’ve said they got rid of all their Yankees gear, and they’re now Twins fans,” Tom Pohlad joked. “Though they’re smart investors, they believe they understand that the real opportunity in this organization comes with winning more baseball games. And so it’s not strictly a financial, they’re not looking at it only from a financial lens.”

All three minority investors will be a part of an advisory board that Tom Pohlad shared their ownership group will be putting together to help better facilitate communications and accountability throughout the organization. Joe, Jim, and Bob Pohlad (Tom and Joe’s father) will also be among those from the Pohlad family to serve on the advisory board.

Tom Pohlad also confirmed that no former Twins players have invested in ownership minority stakes. There had been rumors that former Twins stars such as Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, and Torii Hunter were interested in taking minority ownership stakes when Justin Ishbia was still exploring a purchase of the team.

With this new ownership group finalized, the Pohlads believe they can collectively steer the Twins onto a better course than where the team has gone over the last three years. Tom Pohlad said their purchase of an ownership stake will help the Pohlad family pay down their debt and gradually build the team’s payroll over the next few years back to where it was in 2023, and maybe even higher than $165 million.

But raising payroll gradually is not the only thing this ownership group wants to do to improve their trust with the fanbase and reputation within Twins Territory.

“They are advisers,” said Pohlad, “but I think it’s in the best interest of the organization to lean on their creative thinking and look at this through a different lens.”