Skip to main content

Liverpool in talks to sell minority stake to Mittal

A consortium of investors led by Amit Bhatia and backed by the Mittal family is in talks to buy a significant minority stake in Liverpool Football Club, in a deal that would value the English Premier League side at more than $6bn.   Owners Fenway Sports Group are interested in capital investment rather than a complete takeover.

The investor group headed by Bhatia, the son-in-law of steel tycoon and billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, has hired advisers to work on the offer and is in active talks with Liverpool’s current US owners Fenway Sports Group, according to people familiar with the matter.

The football club was expected to be valued at more than $6bn in any transaction, three people said, one of the highest in football history. The attempted deal underlines the continued appeal of England’s top-tier football clubs and the global reach of the Premier League.

People familiar with the talks stressed to th Financial Times  that no deal had yet been struck and there was no certainty an agreement would be reached. It would be the latest big-money deal in English football, following the £2.5bn takeover of Chelsea FC in 2022 and Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s purchase of a minority stake in Manchester United, which valued Liverpool’s arch-rivals at more than $6.3bn, including debt, in 2023.

Liverpool is owned by FSG, which is controlled by American billionaire John Henry, who made his fortune in commodities trading. His group bought Liverpool for £300mn in 2010. FSG also owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team and in 2024 led a consortium in a $1.5bn investment into the commercial arm of the PGA Tour golf competition. In December last year, FSG sold the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey franchise to the Hoffman family for $1.7bn.

Ahead of the potential deal, Bhatia agreed to transfer his shareholding in Queens Park Rangers, which plays in the English second tier, to majority owner Ruben Gnanalingam. This is to avoid holding stakes in two clubs. The Liverpool talks come two months after the Mittal family agreed in May to buy a minority stake in the Rajasthan Royals, the Indian Premier League cricket franchise.

Liverpool is one of the biggest brands in global sport. The club has won the Uefa Champions League six times and the English top flight a joint-record 20 times. Under FSG, it has undergone a turnaround on and off the pitch. T

 Liverpool’s revenue rose to north of £700mn in the 2024-2025 season, a club record, from £613mn the prior year. Its commercial partners include bank Standard Chartered, German sportswear maker Adidas and Google Pixel.  FSG sold a minority stake in September 2023 to US private equity firm Dynasty Equity.

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