The group aiming to take a significant stake in Everton is already providing them with funding for their new stadium and is “on track” to take two positions on the Premier League club’s board.
MSP Sports Capital has been in exclusive talks with
Everton’s majority owner, Farhad Moshiri, for the past two weeks about
investment into Everton Stadium Development Company, the business Moshiri set
up in 2017 to oversee the construction of the club’s new home at Bramley-Moore
Dock.
The proposed deal would see a limited partnership led by New
York-based MSP effectively give Moshiri £100million to £150million ($124m to
$187m) in loans that can be converted to equity in the Merseyside club.
The British-Iranian billionaire has poured at least £750m of
his fortune into Everton since taking control of the club in 2016, with £400m
of that sum going into the new stadium alone.
But there is still at least £360m needed to finish the
stadium, as the project’s initial budget of £500m has grown to £760m. Moshiri
had hoped to fund this in much the same way Tottenham Hotspur financed their
new home, via cheap, long-term debt sourced by the two global banks
he appointed in 2020, JPMorgan and MUFG.
Unfortunately, several factors have combined to make
investors more reluctant to invest in Everton’s ambitious building project than
Tottenham’s.
Firstly, the club’s financial performance over the past five
years has been shocking, with losses of more than £400m since 2018. Secondly,
the club have only narrowly avoided relegation these past two seasons. And,
finally, Moshiri’s funding plan also included a large contribution for the
stadium’s naming rights from companies connected to his long-term business
partner and friend Alisher Usmanov.
That source of funds was shut off — along with several
lucrative sponsorships for the team — when the UK government sanctioned Usmanov
for his links to the Russian state in the weeks following the full-scale
invasion of Ukraine last year. And to compound Moshiri’s difficulties, his own
bank accounts in Russia were frozen because of his British citizenship, leaving
him unable to fill the funding gap.
Faced with these circumstances, he has been forced to
consider options that could see his stake in Everton reduce from its current 94
per cent to more like 60 per cent.
MSP’s proposal would see it provide £100m in loans with
warrants — a type of security that enables lenders to buy shares at a low,
fixed price — that would give the firm a 25 per cent stake in Everton. However,
MSP could end up with an even bigger stake as Everton need more like £150m to
cover the funding gap at Bramley-Moore Dock and the club’s day-to-day needs.
Once the stadium is built and hopefully adds £40m to £60m to
Everton’s turnover, the club’s owners would then try to refinance all of
Everton’s borrowings with a large, long-term corporate bond. Assuming global
interest rates go the way most economists are predicting, this could happen
within three years. Any early repayment penalty on the construction loan would
be cancelled out by the lower cost of borrowing.
It should also be noted that if Everton do borrow £360m to
finish the stadium, it would take the total amount of interest-bearing debt
they are carrying past £500m, as they already have significant loans from Metro
Bank and Cheshire-based private lender Rights and Media Funding.
Comments
Post a Comment