THE BOARD OF LIVERPOOL FC has met to consider two ‘credible’ bids lodged on Tuesday from parties seeking to buy the troubled Premier League club.
Both bids are understood to be intent on paying off the club’s £282m (€324m) debt, as well as giving the club’s current co-owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, a return on their investments in the club.
One of the bidding parties is New England Sports Ventures, a holding company that already owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team, while the other party – the identity of which is not yet known – is a Far Eastern bidder.
That bidder could be Chinese businessman Kenny Huang, who was reported earlier this summer as being interested in a bid – which would be funded by the China Investment Corporation, the country’s foreign investment fund. Such a bid, if accepted, would therefore see the club move into the hands of the Chinese government.
The BBC reports that the club’s chairman Martin Broughton, appointed specifically to oversee the sale of the club, is keen to approve either deal, feeling that either bidder would be prepared to put the club on a sound financial footing.
Enthusiasm about the bids is tempered, however, with indications that Gillett and Hicks insist on making a profit from their time involved in the club.
Various efforts to sell the club, which had gathered momentum earlier in the summer, had all run out of steam – with one of the most prominent bidders, Syrian investor Yahya Kirdi, announcing earlier this evening he had abandoned his plan to buy the club saying the valuation of Hicks and Gillett was simply too high.
The club needs to find new owners before October 15, when its debt is called in by the Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia, or it will face having to be repossessed by those banks.
Doing so would likely see the club enter administration – a situation the club’s supporters could ill-afford to countenance, with the club currently sitting in the bottom three of the Premier League with just six points from the opening seven games.
Administration would see the club incur a nine-point penalty from the league, which could pose a genuine threat to the club’s ability to avoid relegation – which, in turn, would further endanger the club’s survival.
