Slovenski nogomet

The American businessmen who own Liverpool Football Club have hired heavyweight City advisers to oversee an auction of part or all of the Premiership outfit, I have learned.

Tom Hicks and George Gillett are on the verge of appointing Barclays Capital, the investment bank, to handle a sale process that will begin shortly by inviting new offers for the club.

It's the latest chapter of an ownership saga that has angered Liverpool fans in recent months as they've seen their team knocked out of the Champions' League and fall away surprisingly early in the Premiership title race.

The owners hope that recruiting Barcap will inject fresh impetus into their quest for new investment, although their preference is now for an outright sale rather than to find an investor prepared to buy a minority stake.

"This is almost certain to be an exit process," a person close to the situation told me tonight. Notwithstanding that, Hicks and Gillett have no intention of selling on the cheap and will rebuff offers for the club that they believe fail to reflect its value. Equally, they may decide to sell only a minority stake if that offers the best immediate value available to them.

As I understand it, Barcap will therefore advise the owners on all options open to them, not just an outright sale.

To provide reassurance for potential buyers that the auction is a genuine attempt to sell the club, Martin Broughton, the chairman of British Airways, will be confirmed as Liverpool's chairman in the early part of next week. His appointment, which is not quite certain yet but which is overwhelmingly likely, will mean Hicks and Gillett stepping down as co-chairmen.

Broughton's role at Liverpool will effectively be that of an interim chairman given that I understand he will play a key role in overseeing the sale of the club.

He would seem to be a well-suited candidate for such a role, given his deep personal interest in sport (he's a keen Chelsea fan and a former chairman of the British Horseracing Board) and his experience of handling challenging corporate situations.

The perception among potential investors that Hicks and Gillett are at loggerheads has played a significant role in frustrating the search for new money.

Rhone Capital, a US private equity firm, did table a proposal several weeks ago that would have seen it acquire a minority equity stake (that would have included management control) in Liverpool for about £100m. Hicks and Gillett were not keen on the idea, and the offer has now lapsed.

There's certainly other interest out there too, including from Middle Eastern and Indian investors, although there are no further firm proposals on the table yet. However, the prospect of full ownership is likely to whet the appetite of many buyers given the possibility of a move to a new stadium and the latent commercial potential of the club.

Liverpool needs an injection of capital to meet the demands of its main creditor, Royal Bank of Scotland, that it reduce its debt by about £100m.

Given that RBS is majority-owned by the British taxpayer, it's unlikely in the extreme that it would want to take control of the club.

That said, the bank is determined to see Liverpool refinanced in the short term.

This news about Liverpool increases the likelihood that English football's three most famous clubs will change hands, given a potential takeover bid for Arsenal from Stan Kroenke and the Red Knights' plans to bid for Manchester United.

Liverpool and its owners declined to comment this evening.

tench napisal/-a:Dirkoyoda San masters the art of the dragon stance...

Memo to Martin Broughton on becoming chairman of Liverpool: cancel the Chelsea season ticket, open a dialogue with the Kop, don’t mention Eidur Gudjohnsen’s dive to get Xabi Alonso suspended, be seated five minutes’ early to engage with fans on row in front, work with good people like Ian Ayre and Christian Purslow and run a mile if Rafael Benítez appears bearing sheaves of paper with numbers on them. And hope Fernando Torres gets fit: one striker the British Airways chairman will want to see.

The_Milkman napisal/-a:uf krasno včeraj čeprav je vse do 2:0 kazalo da se bo tole nesrečno kazalo posebi ko je Benfica lepo stisnila naše že takoj v obrambi...

hahaha Mascherano uničil DiMario, Grk zaprl Cardoza.... Lucas tokrat celo ni bil v napoto

Dallas based Hicks and Colorado based Gillett said: “Owning Liverpool Football Club over these past three years has been a rewarding and exciting experience for us and our families.

tench napisal/-a:e]

Dragi Tom, nedvomno je bila to zelo vznemirljiva, še bolj pa izpopolnjujoča izkušnja tudi za nas. Slava ti!




Edit; Hahahahahha....Hezbolah se je odločil kanalizirati sredstva v tujino. Mednarodni terorizem nove dobe...

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528, ... 57,00.html

WOULD you buy Liverpool Football Club for £500m, if you had the money (or indeed, as per the usual process in the Premier League, if you certainly didn’t)? That’s the price put upon the club by the right-wing Yankee leveraged buyout monkeys and turkey stranglers Tom Hicks and George Gillett, who seem to loathe each other even more than the Scouse fans loathe them. That’s almost double what the pair “paid” for the club just three years ago, so one assumes that the Hicks-Gillett partnership is adopting the stance of a stallholder in a Marrakesh souk and one should immediately divide the starting price by 10.