Forty-three-year-old Wilmette billionaire Thomas S. Ricketts and his family are Tribune Company's "preferred bidder" for the Cubs.

Tom Ricketts is the son of J. Joe Ricketts, founder of Omaha, Nebraska-based TD Ameritrade, and is of no relation whatsoever to former Cardinal Dave Ricketts, whose image on this 1968 Topps card has haunted me since I was a baseball card-collecting kid back in 1968.

More about the new owner-in-waiting, who currently sits on the board of the company his father founded, though he was never employed by it:

Thomas S. Ricketts is the chairman and chief executive officer of Incapital LLC, a company he co-founded in 1999. Incapital is a technologically oriented investment bank focused exclusively on the underwriting and distribution of fixed-income products to individual investors. Incapital underwrites for several major U.S. corporations through its InterNotes product platform. From 1996 to 1999, Ricketts was a vice president and an investment banker for the brokerage division of ABN AMRO. From 1995 to 1996, he was a vice president at Mesirow Financial. From 1988 to 1994, Ricketts was a market maker on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. He holds a bachelor's degree and an MBA from the University of Chicago.