THE JUDGE HEARING the case taken by the Royal Bank of Scotland against Liverpool co-owners Tim Hicks and George Gillett has told the court he will deliver his ruling.

At the end of a tense and fraught day in Court 16 at the Royal Courts of Justice, Judge Christopher Floyd said he would need the evening to deliberate on the submissions made by all parties, but would announce his ruling at the beginning of tomorrow’s hearings  - at 10:30am.

The continuing saga came after solicitors for RBS told the court that Hicks and Gillett were deliberately trying to profit from the confusion caused by their moves to gerrymander appointments to the club’s board in order to have it block the sale.

They asked the judge to restore a ‘clearly constituted and functioning board’ at the hearing, saying such a matter could not wait given the urgency of securing the sale.

RBS also showed the court a copy of the sale agreement signed by itself and by Hicks and Gillett in April of this year, where club chairman Martin Broughton was given the sole power to control appointments or removals from the club’s board of directors.

Hicks admits breaching Broughton contract

Paul Girolami QC, representing Hicks and Gillett who declined to attend in person, admitted his clients had breached Broughton’s contract by overruling his appointments, but insisted there was no need for the board to be reconstituted before Friday, when the club’s massive loan from RBS was to expire – a claim derided as “absurd” by RBS.

Girolami insisted that the bank and his clients were locked into an agreement until November 1, and it was not required for the matter to be concluded this week.

The pair also denied that they were deliberately trying to create uncertainty, and said they accepted that their ownership of the club would soon end.

Rather than trying to merely stop the sale of the club to New England Sports Ventures, their only grievance was that the board had improperly entered into an agreement with NESV without looking at alternative offers. As a result, they said, it was the board itself – and not themselves – in breach of the sale agreement.

Furthermore, there had been no meeting of the board of Kop Holdings Ltd – the company that actually owns Liverpool FC – as there should have been. In a letter to the court read by Girolami, Hicks said he and Gillett felt “excluded from the sales process by the [rest of the] board”.

The three English board members had isolated the co-owners so much that they were referring to themselves as the “home team” in internal emails, one of which was accidentally copied to Hicks, he said. Hicks had only breached the sales agreement and tried to sack two board members because the ‘sub-committee’ the three others had set up was already contrary to the agreement.

In particular, the pair wanted to know why the Broughton had cancelled a meeting with Mill Financial, a group which had offered to pay off the club’s debts and provide £100m in funding for Liverpool’s long-awaited new stadium in return for acquiring the club, which remains interested in a sale.

Board says NESV was the best bidder

Lord Grabiner QC, representing the board of directors, said the complaints that the board had not spoken to other buyers because it was not required to find the best deal for the club, but merely any deal, and the proposal of NESV was the one it had opted to endorse. If Hicks and Gillett acknowledged the board’s function to sell the club, and are annoyed about the conditions of the sale, they should sue for damages instead of trying to retain control of the asset.

Grabiner also said claims that Hicks and Gillett were being sidelined by the remainder of the board were bonus – they had been informed that a board meeting to discuss NESV’s bid was taking place last Tuesday, the day the offer expired, and had chosen not to attend. They had, however, had a lawyer listen to the meeting via telephone – meaning they were fully aware of the board’s proceedings.

Counsel for Broughton, meanwhile, explained that the “home team” terminology was used only in relation to a teleconference where multiple bidders were on the line, and were unable to hear what other parties were proposing.

He said that Mill Financial had demanded exclusivity, probibited under the RBS agreement, while Meriton only upped its offer after NESV’s terms had been publicised.

It was reported last week that Gillett had defaulted on a £75m loan given by Mill Financial, meaning that it had assumed his share of Kop Holdings. The same reports said Mill was examining ways to pay off the debts while leaving Hicks in control of the club. Mill Financial is owned by Dwight Schar, who co-owns the Washington Redskins.

Another bidder, Meriton (the formal body for the bid of Peter Lim), wrote to Hicks and Gillett on Friday asking “what was going on” regarding their own bid. Meriton, the pair’s representative said, believed theirs was the ‘preferred’ bid.