BAHRAIN-BASED INVESTMENT bank GFH Capital will complete a 100 percent takeover of Leeds United on 21 December, the club’s current owner Ken Bates said today.
Bates, 80, who took charge of fallen English giants Leeds nearly eight years ago, said the first part of the takeover had been completed and he will stay on as chairman until the end of the season to help the new owners during a transitional period.
“We have now completed all the negotiations and investigations with GFH and we’ve now completed the first part of the purchase,” former Chelsea chairman Bates told Yorkshire Radio.
“Meanwhile there’s a transitional period in which they get to know more about the club.” He added: “Quite simply they (GFH) will be providing additional working capital for the club and they are also providing funds to strengthen the team.
“Neil Warnock will continue as manager, obviously with more support than the present owners have been able to give and we look forward to a smooth transition.
I can say although the negotiations have taken a very long time, the benefit of that is that, unlike some overseas owners, who have gone in blind like a bull in a china shop and made a complete mess of the club after taking over, this six-month courtship if you like, for want of a better phrase, has given them (GFH) enough opportunities to see how Leeds United works.
“What the advantages and disadvantages are, the strengths and weaknesses, what needs to be done and what needs to be supported,” Bates said of a deal worth a reported £52 million.
And Bates insisted this handover would prevent the kind of uncertainty, and in some cases downright chaos, that had accompanied a change of ownership at rival English clubs.
You can look for a more Manchester United-type transition than we’ve seen at Blackburn, Portsmouth and other less fortunate clubs.
Leeds, one of England’s most successful sides in the early to mid 1970s, are currently 18th in the second-tier Championship, the division below the lucrative Premier League.
Bates, an unpopular figure with some Leeds fans, took charge at Elland Road 18 months after selling his controlling stake in Chelsea to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
“We’ve made no secret of the fact that we’ve been looking at additional partners and investors ever since I joined the club on January 21, 2005,” Bates said Wednesday.
There have been a number of reasons why it hasn’t succeeded before, one of them being there are so many liars, chancers and conmen attracted to football and it’s been a very slow, steady, careful process in weeding out those people and not letting them anywhere near Elland Road.
GFH Capital, a subsidiary of Bahraini investment bank Gulf Finance House, is a private equity firm specialising in investments in “growth companies”. - © AFP, 2012
