Liverpool profit will service new owners' loan
· Hicks compares fans to consumers of Weetabix
· Deal similar to Glazers' takeover at Old Trafford
Lawrence Donegan in Dallas
Tuesday May 22, 2007
The Guardian
Liverpool's preparations for tomorrow night's Champions League final in Athens against Milan took an embarrassing detour last night when the American owner Tom Hicks compared his recent purchase of the storied Anfield club to a previous business deal which saw him buy the breakfast cereal company Weetabix. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the billionaire Texan also confirmed for the first time that the club's profits would be used to meet the interest payments on the loan that enabled him and his partner, George Gillett, to buy the club - a business model similar to the controversial deal allowing the Glazer family to take control of Manchester United.
In contrast to the Glazers, Hicks and Gillett have been welcomed with open arms in England after taking over at Anfield. The pair paid £178m for the club, borrowed from the Royal Bank of Scotland, with interest payments on the loan amounting to over £21m a year. "Hopefully the club will have extra cash flow so they can pay us a dividend to do that," Hicks said when asked how the cost of the loan would be met. "If they don't, then it will come from our pockets. But the club will have to have profits sufficient to pay those dividends."
Responding to the suggestion this was the same kind of financial arrangement that incensed critics of the Glazers, Hicks was both candid and unrepentant. "When I was in the leverage buy-out business we bought Weetabix and we leveraged it up to make our return. You could say that anyone who was eating Weetabix was paying for our purchase of Weetabix. It was just business. It is the same for Liverpool; revenues come in from whatever source and go out to whatever source and, if there is money left over, it is profit," he said.
Hicks, who will be in Athens to watch his team take on Milan, was equally candid about the way the Glazers went about their takeover at Old Trafford, describing it as a "blueprint of what not to do", even if it eased their own move into English football.
"They were the first," he said. "There were fans who honestly believed that, if an American owner came in and borrowed some of the purchase price, it could be the end of the club's success. I think things changed when people saw that the Glazers didn't necessarily turn out to be the end of Manchester football." Hicks, who made his fortune buying and selling companies around the globe, currently owns two American sports teams, the Dallas Stars ice hockey team and baseball's Texas Rangers.
He described his first two months in charge at Anfield as a "honeymoon". Since taking over he has attended three of Liverpool's matches, away to West Ham and the two home European ties against Barcelona and Chelsea. "I also went to a game at Arsenal. They have enthusiastic fans but it wasn't like at Liverpool. They don't have the Kop - the ardent passion, the songs, the chants, the cheers. The level [of noise] at the Barça match was amazing but at the Chelsea game it was at another level altogether."
Hicks has enjoyed mixed fortunes with his American sports teams, with the Dallas Stars winning ice hockey's ultimate prize, the Stanley Cup. The Texas Rangers, on the other hand, have not finished higher than third in their four-team division since 2000 and are currently mired at the base of the American League West.
In the circumstances it is scarcely any wonder Hicks is delighted to see Liverpool progress to tomorrow night's final, although he admitted he could not take any of the credit for the team's success. "I feel kind of guilty. It's like buying a baseball team a month before they go to the world series. I had nothing to do with it but I'm going to enjoy it," he said.
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