TWG Global Denies Fraud as Feds Subpoena the Ratings Firm That Blessed Mark Walter's $20 Billion in Loans

Since Delaware Life agreed on August 18 to swap up to $6.5 billion of related-party investments for independent assets, Mark Walter's TWG Global has moved from silence to a full public counterattack.

On Wednesday morning, TWG Global issued a statement blasting what it called "multipronged attacks" against the holding company and its subsidiaries, per CNBC. "Despite what has been reported, there has been no fraud," the company said. "There is no victim here. No one has been harmed, and no one has claimed they were harmed."

The statement came eight days after Reuters reported Delaware Life's asset swap and after S&P Global revised its outlook on the insurer to negative following a restatement of annual financial statements. The restatement reclassified a large volume of private credit investments as affiliated or related-party assets.

The dispute at the center: whether Delaware Life and Clear Spring Life, two insurers Walter controls through Group 1001, improperly labeled billions in private-credit loans as unaffiliated when they actually flowed to businesses tied to Walter himself. The Wall Street Journal has reported that federal prosecutors and the SEC are investigating whether Walter or his businesses committed fraud by concealing those financial connections. Both insurers received grand jury subpoenas from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York in February.

The Ratings Firm Now in the Crosshairs

The Justice Department has gathered records from Egan-Jones Ratings Co., a small but prolific credit rater that provided the only known ratings on more than a fifth of the insurers' bond holdings, and has sent the firm a subpoena, the Los Angeles Times reported.

At the end of last year, Egan-Jones was the sole ratings provider on about 16% of the $32 billion of bonds in Delaware Life's portfolio, according to a Bloomberg data review cited by the LA Times. Investment-grade ratings from firms like Egan-Jones let insurers hold less capital against those assets, freeing up money to run the business.

Egan-Jones told the LA Times it is "not the subject or target of any investigation at the SDNY" and said subpoenas are a routine part of its business. A subpoena does not mean a recipient is the focus of a probe. Representatives for the U.S. attorney's office and TWG Global declined to comment.

The subpoena shows SDNY prosecutors are looking beyond Walter's own companies to understand how Delaware Life and Clear Spring didn't disclose, until this year, that more than $20 billion in loans on their books funded affiliated entities.

TWG's Defense, and What It Leaves Out

TWG's Wednesday statement leaned on one specific claim: that Guggenheim's auditor issued unqualified audit opinions for both 2024 and 2025, including on the revenue now under scrutiny. Those audit opinions have not been independently confirmed as publicly filed or made available to regulators. The claim currently rests on TWG's own press release.

TWG also characterized the $6.5 billion asset swap as a routine regulatory fix, not a crisis response, and said affiliated transactions are commonplace across the insurance industry and widely permitted subject to regulatory requirements. The company said no policyholders have lost money.

But Yahoo Finance's reporting flags a wrinkle TWG's framing glosses over: TWG's own plan involves buying the affiliated assets directly onto the holding company's balance sheet, a structure that materially increases TWG's leverage and liquidity risk. That's not a neutral cleanup. It's a decision to absorb billions in questioned assets onto the parent company's own books.

TWG also pushed back on reports it's dumping sports assets to raise capital, saying it "is not looking to sell its sports assets at 'fire sale' prices." On the Lakers, first reported by ESPN and detailed by Breitbart, TWG noted that Josh Kushner and Bob Iger's $12.5 billion offer represents a 25% premium over what Walter paid less than a year ago. "Regarding the Los Angeles Dodgers, to be clear, the team is not being sold and no sale process has been initiated," TWG said.

A 25% one-year gain on the Lakers is a legitimate business outcome, not obviously a distress sale, and CBC reported that Stan Kasten of the Professional Women's Hockey League advisory board confirmed no changes are planned for that league's ownership either. Fox News made a similar point about the underlying baseball reporting, noting that framing the Dodgers' spending as somehow dependent on the insurance loans ignores that the team's payroll decisions and on-field performance this season have nothing to do with Walter's insurance business.

The timing raised questions across the sports press. Yahoo Sports reported that Walter reportedly did not seek competing bids on the Lakers and closed the deal within roughly 72 hours of being approached, with one person close to NBA owners calling it "one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen," per Front Office Sports.

No charges have been filed against Walter or any TWG entity. The investigations by SDNY prosecutors, the SEC, and the Delaware Department of Insurance remain open, and TWG says it is cooperating with all of them. The Lakers sale still needs approval from the NBA's board of governors, a process ESPN has reported could take several weeks.