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Mark Walter’s education nonprofit, Academy Group, is set to receive substantially all of its future funding from Amistad Financial Group, a company federal prosecutors are examining in a broader investigation of Walter-linked business dealings, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The reported funding shift links the nonprofit to a firm under scrutiny, but the report says the lending being investigated is not related to Academy Group.
Academy Group was established in 2013 with a $160 million commitment from Walter and was connected to Chicago credit manager CFI Partners through an arrangement involving collateralized loan obligations, or CLOs. CFI Partners became an Amistad subsidiary in 2023, according to regulatory filings cited in the report. Academy Group executives were told earlier this year that Amistad would provide substantially all of the nonprofit’s future funding, Bloomberg reported.
The development puts a philanthropic organization’s financing model in focus as prosecutors examine transactions involving Walter’s insurance businesses and other entities linked to his business empire. Neither Walter nor his holding company, TWG Global, has been accused of wrongdoing, and the available reporting does not say that Academy Group is a subject of the investigation.
Funding model ties the nonprofit to CFI Partners
Academy Group’s public description of its model says it holds economic interests in commercial portfolio companies, including CFI Partners and Cleveland Avenue, and uses revenue from those businesses to support its programs. CFI Partners’ own materials describe an economic alignment with the Academy, saying profits from its interest and other companies help provide sustainable support for the nonprofit.
The original arrangement dates to 2013. According to Bloomberg’s account, Walter committed $160 million to Academy Group to help CFI Partners comply with requirements under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, while the credit manager used the structure to issue CLOs. CLOs pool loans and issue securities backed by the resulting cash flows; the report does not provide further details on the specific terms or current value of the arrangement.
CFI Partners manages about $28 billion in assets, according to the report. Its move under Amistad in 2023 created the corporate link behind the latest funding decision: Amistad is now expected to support most of the nonprofit’s future needs, rather than funding coming directly through the earlier relationship with CFI Partners.
Amistad’s place in the federal inquiry
Federal prosecutors are examining Amistad as one of several intermediaries in an inquiry into how Walter’s insurance companies lent more than $20 billion to other parts of his business empire, Bloomberg reported. The investigation is focused on whether loans involving affiliated businesses were disclosed to regulators as required. The report does not establish that Amistad or any other named party has been charged with a crime.
Amistad is chaired by Don Thompson, the former chief executive of McDonald’s, who also runs investment firm Cleveland Avenue. Academy Group lists Cleveland Avenue among its portfolio companies. The report also notes Amistad’s acquisitions of insurers previously owned by Walter’s sports partners, including EquiTrust Life Insurance, formerly owned by basketball Hall of Famer Earvin “Magic” Johnson, and three insurers owned by Robert Patton Jr., a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers with Walter.
Those connections offer context for why Amistad appears in coverage of the investigation, but they do not, by themselves, establish wrongdoing. Bloomberg’s report says the loans under scrutiny are separate from Academy Group’s financing, a distinction that matters in assessing the nonprofit’s reported new funding source.
Nonprofit’s programs and what remains unclear
Academy Group describes its work as a long-term education and career pathway for young people, including support from school years through college and job placement. Its public materials say the organization’s funding model was intended to generate revenue through commercial interests and eventually become self-sustaining without continued philanthropic capital.
The reported shift to Amistad raises questions about how the nonprofit’s support will operate under the new arrangement, but the available account gives no funding amount, timetable, contractual terms or breakdown of what “substantially all” means in practice. It also does not describe whether Academy Group plans to alter its programs or seek other sources of support.
In a statement on September 20, Walter’s family said its philanthropic strategy remained unchanged, that existing financial commitments were intact, and that it intended to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars more to causes and institutions. The statement, as reported by Bloomberg, did not specifically address Academy Group’s new arrangement with Amistad. No detailed public response on the funding transition or its terms was included in the report.
