Skip to main content

Qataris bid over £5bn for United

The Qatari group hoping to become the new owners of Manchester United have made an improved bid that if accepted would break the £5 billion barrier for a sports franchise. Sir Jim Ratcliffe also submitted his latest bid before the deadline.

Third and final bids for the Premier League club had to be submitted by 10pm on Friday and the offer tabled by Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani was a small increase on their previous bid. As part of their submission, they pledged to remove all of the club’s debt and invest heavily in the club’s infrastructure and transfer budget.

Insiders insisted it took the price a fraction over £5 billion. The Glazer family value the club at nearer to £6 billion.

But the increase reflects not only Sheikh Jassim’s desire to win the battle for ownership but is also a response to the news, reported in The Times this week, that the main rivals to the Qataris are proposing a deal that would enable Avram and Joel Glazer to retain a stake.

Sources close to the Qataris would argue a 100 per cent buyout is far more straightforward, while also stressing that, even now, Sheikh Jassim is not prepared to overpay. A deal struck just beyond £5 billion would be a world record for a sports team. Bidding only continued to Friday night’s third round because nobody has yet been prepared to meet the Glazers’ £6 billion valuation.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reports about Charlton sale exaggerated

Reports have appeared in The Guardian and elsewhere that Charlton has been put up for sale. Richard Cawley is an authoritative local journalist who runs a South London Sport substack site.  He reached out to the club yesterday evening to ask for comment on The Guardian’s article. Early indications from the club have been that nothing has changed since the story about them seeking investment, except that it is now a different company doing it. Charlton have since managed to consolidate their place in the Championship, avoiding an instant return to League One, with their women’s side promoted to the WSL, returning to the top flight for the first time since 2007, although staying there is likely to be costly. It would be counter-intuitive for owners Global Football Partners not to progress the club when looking for investment, that the focus remains on driving it forward, that their spend this summer is in line with long-term planning and will see an increase in wages spent on players...
Post a Comment
Read more

Levy's anomalous status at Spurs

It is now nearly a year since Daniel Levy was dismissed as Tottenham Hotspur chairman by the Lewis family.  It has been 12 months of dramatic twists and turns, with Spurs avoiding relegation on the final day of the Premier League season, and then spending unprecedented sums this summer to try to make sure such a scare never happens again. But while most fans focus on the football — and a dubbing by Brentford   — another set of issues have been bubbling away separately. These relate to Levy’s continued position as a minority shareholder in the club. This has been in the news for much of this summer, even as we approach the first anniversary of Levy’s dismissal, and specifically this month, after he missed the opportunity last week to participate in the Lewis family’s latest equity injection into the club. On Thursday morning the club confirmed that his shareholding has been diluted, down by roughly two per cent, after the creation of new ENIC shares. Levy’s dism...
Post a Comment
Read more