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Mark Walter and Todd Boehly are in talks to sell their stakes in Premier League soccer club Chelsea to the team’s majority owner, investment firm Clearlake Capital, sources confirmed to Front Office Sports.
The news comes during a turbulent time for Walter, who last week stunned the sports world by selling his controlling stake in the Lakers at a $12.5 billion valuation—just one year after buying the team at a then-record $10 billion valuation. The Lakers sale comes as Walter’s insurance empire is under federal investigation over the treatment and disclosure of affiliated investments. Sources told FOS last week the Lakers deal is likely tied to his troubles, with one person saying “cash crunch” and another saying “the expedited process screams liquidity crunch.”
Walter and Boehly each own a little less than 13% of the team, having bought into Chelsea back in 2022. The Financial Times first reported that the duo was in talks to sell their Chelsea stakes to Clearlake.
Two sources familiar with the matter tell FOS that talks are ongoing, although one says the discussions predate the insurance investigation becoming public.
A representative for Chelsea declined to comment. Representatives for Clearlake and Walter’s company, TWG Global, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A representative for the Southern District of New York, where federal prosecutors are investigating Walter’s business empire, declined to comment on the status of the investigation. The existence of the SDNY investigation and a parallel probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission were first disclosed in a June regulatory filing that revealed two of Walter’s companies, Delaware Life and Clear Spring Life & Annuity, received grand jury subpoenas. “The company is cooperating with the investigation,” the filing said.
Walter doesn’t just face possible penalties from the SDNY and SEC probes, however. The Delaware Department of Insurance, which regulates Delaware Life and Clear Spring, has broad authority over transactions between insurance companies and their affiliates, according to University of Texas law professor Andrew Granato.
Before the news about the investigation into Walter’s business empire broke, Granato published a paper explaining private equity firms that have private credit arms and also buy life insurance companies often profit from the insurers “while shifting the resulting risk onto competitors and taxpayers.” He tells FOS that Delaware law provides for criminal penalties, including potential prison time, for an officer, director, or employee who willfully and knowingly makes false filings with the intent to deceive. Prosecutors would need to prove Walter’s life insurance companies were knowingly and intentionally deceptive with their filings—and that he knew about it—Granato tells FOS.
Given the circumstances surrounding the insurers’ disclosures, purposeful deception appears possible, though the bar for proving it is high, Granato says. In June 2025, Delaware Life reported about $1.4 billion, or roughly 3% of its invested assets, were so-called “affiliated investments,” meaning investments involving companies connected to the insurer. But after an internal review prompted by the federal subpoenas, the company disclosed this only in June; the company restated its filings to show the figure was actually more than $17 billion, or about 40%.
Granato says the initial 3% figure was a “flashing red light” because it sat just below Delaware’s threshold for mandatory regulatory review of affiliated transactions. The change to 40% is “an order of magnitude of an admitted mistake in the accounting,” he tells FOS.
“There is authority under Delaware law, solely insurance regulatory law, that can, in theory, put Mark Walter in prison,” he says.
In response to a request for comment from FOS, a representative for the Delaware Department of Insurance said, “While I understand the desire for immediate details, it’s crucial that the DOI navigate this situation with the utmost professionalism and care. We’re committed to providing updates when it’s appropriate to do so.”
