DIC latest - the largely wild speculation thread

[Steve101]

Paul McGoohan who was once the news editor at Sky Sports News................................so any press conferences will be bland, and repeated at least 60 times throughout the day, oh, and anti-liverpool!!!!!!! (this is as joke, by the way, before anyone gets uippity)

[sinbad]

Hick-up for Rafa ...Dubai or sell?
Lawro 16/02/2008

Rafa Benitez has been painted as a whinger, a moaner and a difficult manager since his rant back at Tom Hicks and George Gillett last year.

But Benitez was, in fact, being very shrewd. Rafa flushed out Liverpool's co-owners and effectively went public by raising his concerns in code as to whether the Americans had the financial clout to run the club successfully.

Now it seems as if Hicks and Gillett are ready to sell again to the Dubai consortium who have some serious Liverpool fans as well as finance behind them.

That's the key for Liverpool, to have some proper genuine fans who care about the club.


This has not been about whether Liverpool are challenging for the title or not or about disappointing results.

That has been frustrating for the players and the fans. But this has been about Hicks and Gillett suddenly realising that the new stadium will be a lot costlier than they first envisaged.

That is what has caught Hicks and Gillett by surprise and why they seem certain to cash in and allow the Dubai group to come in and play the real sugar daddy.

I still think Liverpool will finish fourth this season and take the Champions League spot. But almost as importantly, new owners again may give the club, manager and players the direction they need.

[shanks69]

Hick-up for Rafa ...Dubai or sell?
Lawro 16/02/2008



I still think Liverpool will finish fourth this season and take the Champions League spot. But almost as importantly, new owners again may give the club, manager and players the direction they need.

lawro reckons we'll still get 4thwell thats us stuffed then

[coop]

Kop that

Pair to cash in on Liverpool sale

By Chris Bascombe

TOM HICKS and George Gillett will share a £50m bonanza when Dubai International Capital finally buy Liverpool.

That's an astonishing £65,000 a day EACH for 12 months of turmoil on Merseyside.

The Arabs are closing in on the deal which will end the Americans' reign.

Negotiations have reached a key stage, with Gillett now most likely to be first to end his association with the club.

Hicks remains the main obstacle as the Arab investment group seek a swift conclusion.

The club is now valued at around £400m, but £350m of this figure forms recently incurred debt.

That means if both Americans were to sell now, they'd share a £50m profit for a year of disarray.

Hicks has first option on Gillett's shares under the terms set when the duo joined forces in 2007.

The nightmare scenario for all parties has been for Hicks to take up this option and assume sole ownership.

However, with Liverpool still facing major financial concerns as they look to fund a £300m stadium on Stanley Park, even Hicks' hardline stance has softened in recent days.

[scouse lad]

things are warming up. expect a Barrett or Hicks denial in the next 48 hours

[sinbad]

How it all went wrong for Kop cowboys


By Chris Bascombe
February 17, 2008 at 12:01 AM

HOW can you ask that?" said an aghast David Moores. "Of course they're the right people for the club."

It was just six months ago that Liverpool's former chairman chastised the reporter who dared suggest Anfield's American dream was not what was presented in the brochure.



In the eyes of the Kop, George Gillett Jnr and Thomas O. Hicks were still friendly uncles rather than demons.

Moores, as sincere as they come but a reluctant participant in the cold-hearted business of football, dared not believe the sniping.

That was until last October, when he and chief executive Rick Parry were confronted with the uncomfortable truth about the Americans' intentions to break the promises which led to their takeover.

Moores' mood changed on hearing plans to saddle £600million worth of debts on Anfield.

His hopes of drifting quietly into semi-retirement were put on hold as he and Parry used what boardroom influence they had to block plans.
Duped

Legal advice was taken as every last detail of the contract which gave Gillett and Hicks power was re-read. Hicks and Gillett had vowed not to 'do a Glazer', but they had chosen their words carefully.

Not piling debt on the club to fund their purchase was not the same as saying they would never do so at a later date.

The so-called promises were not worth the paper they weren't written on and those closest to Moores felt he had been duped.

The plot to end the American revolution was under way. The Anfield civil war had begun — and the cavalry was arriving from the east.

Alerted to fresh financial concerns at Anfield, Dubai International Capital felt encouraged to return to the fray. The first tentative approaches were made in November.

DIC found the Americans, recognising the business of English football was more expensive than they thought, were willing to talk, initially with a view to selling a minority shareholding.
Worst

Gillett, who had bought Liverpool to pass on to his son Foster, was more sympathetic to the growing concerns of the old hierarchy, who pleaded with him to act in the broader interests of the club.

From the outset, when Hicks was arriving for games in his Liver Bird-crested cowboy boots, the old board feared the worst. They were comforted to know Gillett shared their concerns.

Hicks and Gillett were almost instantly at odds. Hicks insisted his own architects from Dallas re-design the planned £400m venue on Stanley Park, seemingly oblivious to the financial and planning consequences.

Torres300_3It seemed Gillett distrusted his partner's high-profile approach. But he was not shy to indulge in some PR of his own, pulling out some dollar bills on TV and saying Benitez could sign ‘Snoogy Doogy' if that was who he wanted.

A comment heard repeatedly during the course of the next few months made its debut: "This is not the Liverpool way."

Gillett and Hicks' relationship deteriorated as they clashed on the cost and structure of the stadium, and the level of debt.


Cracks in their co-ownership were increasingly visible as they sat apart during their infrequent visits to Anfield and employed separate accountants to assess club finances.

The pair were united on one subject, however. Following his outburst in Athens after the 2007 Champions League Final and successive seasons when he had courted the attention of Real Madrid, they agreed Rafa Benitez's long-term future demanded re-assessment.

Benitez, who claimed he resisted the lure of the Bernabeu after being made promises of his own, was fuming that the public commitment of a greater transfer kitty was not matched by the cheques.

He had summer funds, but no more or less than Moores had provided, and felt it was still based on player sales and European winnings. He was desperate for the fans to know the truth, and when private briefings had no impact, he went public.

The result was a spree which brought Fernando Torres, Ryan Babel, Lucas Leiva and Yossi Benayoun to Anfield for combined fees of about £42m, although Benitez recouped plenty by selling Craig Bellamy and Luis Garcia.

When the Premier League challenge stuttered and the Champions League started badly, Hicks and Gillett sensed a chance to wield the axe.
Controversial

Benitez e-mailed his January transfer plans across the Atlantic and received the cold response he should ‘focus on coaching and training'. He believed the transfer embargo was because the Americans wanted him out. He was right.

The News of the World printed the story of the plot to sack Benitez on November 25, allowing him to galvanise the fans' support and expose the rift ripping through the heart of the club.

The Kop still stopped short of anti-American protests, but that soon changed when Hicks admitted the plot to sack Benitez and replace him with Jurgen Klinsmann. Contempt for Hicks was at its peak and fans' protests intensified. In the meantime, Hicks' stadium plans had been redesigned to cut costs. The controversial refinancing package was also altered, reducing the level of debt against the club.

Significantly, Gillett remained silent, refusing to endorse the new stadium or £350m refinancing agreement. He wanted out and was already deep into negotiations with DIC.


"It's now a question of when, not if DIC get in," club sources said.

By now, the public perception matched the reality. Liverpool were a club in crisis, deeply divided at every level.

Parry and Moores were desperate for DIC to secure a deal, even though they recognised their own futures were as uncertain as the manager's.

Troubling though the obstacles and delays were, they remained confident of a successful resolution.

By now, Benitez was relying more on political alliances than results to secure his position, as the latest title challenge ended prematurely. Initially, the feud with his bosses offered a shield against events on the pitch.

In recent weeks an unlikely bond has formed between Hicks and Benitez. The bust-up which prompted so much bad blood splattered across the back pages has been mended.

Whatever his future holds, Benitez will be thanked for his role in exposing the Americans.

He helped put the first nail in the coffin of their joint reign and will be loved for it by the Kop. However, when the ink has eventually dried on the imminent deal with DIC, which will remedy their serious error of 12 months ago, it is Moores and Parry who will have redeemed themselves as the men whose internal resistance truly saved the club from meltdown.

[Rafa Shankly]

****ing hell,looks like another liverpool sunday in the rags.

thats 3 articles alone bascombe has in the notw.

[Johnny]

Last week we were reading about G+H making 50 mil each profit.now it`s 25 mil each.It`s getting better and better each week.

[sinbad]

Report: Hicks softening where DIC concerned
Posted on February 17th, 2008 by Jim Boardman

Texan Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks is beginning to soften his stubborn approach to selling his share in Liverpool Football Club, as Dubai International step up their efforts to buy the club they missed out on just over a year ago.

According to Chris Bascombe in an article on the News of the World’s website, George Gillett Junior will be the most likely of the two to bail out first, with a healthy profit coming his way as soon as he does. The report says that the duo would share £50m between them, with the negotiations having reached a “key stage”.

The report also says Hicks is “the main obstacle”, with DIC seeking a “swift conclusion”.

Regardless of how hard Hicks tries to deny it, there’s no doubt whatsoever that DIC are in talks with the current owners about buying into the club. PR firms have been engaged to deal with the press on behalf of DIC, and even before that key journalists were getting information to pass on to their readers. And that’s not only coming from DIC, there are people inside the club other than Hicks and Gillett who need to be involved in at least certain aspects of the interest from Dubai.

What is in doubt is just how much money is being put on the table by DIC, and how much the US owners are now demanding. They paid £174m for the club last year. Or at least they borrowed the money to pay for the club, including an additional £45m to pay off the club’s debt at the time of making their offer to shareholders, a total of £219m. In theory you could have gazumped the duo with a quarter-of-a-billion a year ago had you got it to spare (or were able to borrow it).

By the autumn gazumping was out of the question because you’d now have to convince Hicks and Gillett to sell rather than David Moores. And Hicks and Gillett were willing to sell part of their share in the club by then - and began talks with DIC to negotiate such a deal, as Tom Hicks confirmed earlier this year. But now a quarter of a billion wasn’t enough. Hicks and Gillett’s asking price for the partial share in the club was based on a value of £1billion for the whole club.

In six or seven months the club’s value, if Hicks and Gillett were to be humoured, was four times greater. Yet nothing had changed. Drawings of a stadium that turned out to be a fantasy had been produced, and given planning permission too based on £60,000 capacity. But drawings don’t add value to a club to the extent that it becomes worth four times its previous value. Transfer dealings were no different significantly to other seasons, Rafa spending a pretty standard £20m net in 2007, so the squad wasn’t now worth three-quarters of a billion more than before. Nothing new had happened in terms of new potential income streams either - TV deals were in place before the owners took over, thirty-ninth games hadn’t been mentioned. And thirty-ninth games don’t make a club £750m more expensive either.

With that in mind, DIC politely declined, but their interest had been rekindled.

Hicks and Gillett were sweating on getting a refinancing package in place to replace their loan from a year ago and it went right to the wire before they got it, and not on terms they liked. They wanted to load all £350m of their newer, bigger loan onto the club. The banks weren’t keen, nor were the non-family members of the board. Eventually the loan was split into two portions. £105m went onto the club’s books and the rest was put onto the holding company’s books, but secured against assets owned by the two families. Some of the club’s £105m was to be used, the owners claimed, for transfers and initial work on the new stadium. By then it was too late for the winter transfer window, which had just closed, and we’ve still heard nothing about progress on getting the latest version of the stadium project underway.

According to the report in the News of the World, the club is valued at £400m, and this would leave the £50m for the US owners to split with each other after the £350m had been settled with the banks. Other reports recently have referred to figures as high as £550m, but it seems that a figure in the mid-£400m range is most likely to be a maximum.

Another complication to any DIC takeover which has been suggested previously is a condition of the owners’ original purchase. Both owners are believed to have first refusal on each others’ holdings should one party wish to sell, and this is mentioned again in today’s report. A common business practice, it does leave us all with what Chris Bascombe describes as a “nightmare scenario” - the possibility that Hicks could take that option and become the 100% shareholder in the club.

Gillett certainly couldn’t afford to buy Hicks out; his finances are believed to have been stretched to the limit with the guarantees he had to put in place for the recent loan. Hicks too would struggle to raise that kind of money and no doubt would already have bought Gillett out some time ago had he been both willing and able.

That recent loan was hard for the owners to raise, and Bascombe suggests that perhaps the next stage on that obstacle-laden path to the new stadium, a further loan of £300m, may be one bridge too far for Hicks. He writes that with this in mind, “even Hicks’ hardline stance has softened in recent days.”

Elsewhere there remain rumours that Hicks will retain some interest in the club, a minority holding which would allow him to make further profit in the future if the new regime run the club successfully. In fact depending on the final price paid, he could retain a 10% share of the club having had all his share of the £350m debt paid off.

If DIC valued the club at £450m, but Hicks wanted to retain a 10% share of the club DIC would therefore pay Gillett £225m - 50% of the club’s value - and Hicks would get £180m - 40% of the club’s value. Hicks currently owes half of the £350m loan that was recently taken out, which is £175m. The money from DIC would cover that, and leave him with a nice £5m windfall to spend on a gift for the family. Obviously those figures are nice round numbers, and with £105m of the debt now actually in the club’s name it may work slightly differently, but Hicks could retain a partial ownership of the club, get a say in what happens in the future, and continue to make money from it. And it would have cost him nothing, other than time and aggravation.

Whether we get a complete takeover by DIC or otherwise, it’s now extremely likely that the Arabs will be running the club quite soon. This season has been a write-off in so many ways the summer break can’t come soon enough. We have to hope that it comes back stronger, as it should have done last summer.

From the first signs of trouble last summer, through the mess we’ve seen both sides of Christmas, many of the facts have been broken by Chris Bascombe in both the Echo and more recently in the News of the World. He’s written an interesting chronology of events that lead up to today’s hopeful proximity to a new era for the club, and reveals something which might surprise you:

“In recent weeks an unlikely bond has formed between Hicks and Benitez. The bust-up which prompted so much bad blood splattered across the back pages has been mended.”

This ties in with what was being said earlier in the month that Rafa had been reassured privately about his future and had accepted those reassurances. The reassurances were said to be from Hicks, not Gillett, who remains silent. Rafa now seems to have softened in terms of his view of Hicks, which is quite some turnaround, but of course planning his off-field tactics is as big a part of Rafa’s day now as planning the on-field ones.

Cynics might suggest that Chris’s chronological article, accompanied by images of certain back pages from the paper, is a plug for the News of the World to try and win back some credit after last week. Rob Beasley’s “exclusive” was considered by Rafa to have sufficiently twisted his words that he started to take legal action. In reality the article serves more as a plug for Chris’s work and the stories he’s managed to break through the long-term building of LFC-related sources. It serves as a reminder that not all the NotW reporters should be tarred with the same brush, and that what Chris writes is important for Reds to read now as it was when he was writing in the Echo.

[Vermilion]

So Dic have switched their attention to buying Newcastle now, ok, it just said it on Talk Sport, but it was said nevertheless. Any TRUTH in it, Bollocks if there is, That will just Top everything off nicely, Having our last hope of salvation **** Off elsewhwere. IMO.

The update is that Ashley apparently contacted Dic to offer them His club to buy. That's not so bad as i thought at 1st.

[sinbad]

Seems life Fat Boy Ashley, wants to be the new Hicks. ie get out with a quick profit.

Exclusive by Rob Beasley
ALAN SHEARER has been asked to front a £250million takeover bid for his beloved Newcastle.

The Toon legend has been approached by a consortium of businessmen based in the North-East who want to buy out the club's billionaire owner Mike Ashley.

And the former Magpies skipper (right) has admitted he is ‘intrigued' by the offer.

A Tyneside source close to the talks said: "Alan has been contacted by a group who want to try and buy Newcastle. They're from the North-East and he knows some of the people who are involved.

[sinbad]

From RAWK posted by danisch (don't know if he's reliable)

Gents, some good news from me 'source' at the DIC this morning.

In his words 'the finance and legal depts are busier than usual drawing up contracts and sorting out the fine print - expect to hear something any day now'

Sunday's the first working day of the week here in Dubai.

Disclaimer: Mind you I don't really know this guy very well, a business contact whom i've met a couple of times over the past couple of weeks, supports leeds. One of the top marketing guys at DIC.

[Jayesh87]

Seems life Fat Boy Ashley, wants to be the new Hicks. ie get out with a quick profit.

Exclusive by Rob Beasley
ALAN SHEARER has been asked to front a £250million takeover bid for his beloved Newcastle.

The Toon legend has been approached by a consortium of businessmen based in the North-East who want to buy out the club's billionaire owner Mike Ashley.

And the former Magpies skipper (right) has admitted he is ‘intrigued' by the offer.

A Tyneside source close to the talks said: "Alan has been contacted by a group who want to try and buy Newcastle. They're from the North-East and he knows some of the people who are involved.

Where does it say that?

[sinbad]

So Dic have switched their attention to buying Newcastle now, ok, it just said it on Talk Sport, but it was said nevertheless. Any TRUTH in it, Bollocks if there is, That will just Top everything off nicely, Having our last hope of salvation **** Off elsewhwere. IMO.

The update is that Ashley apparently contacted Dic to offer them His club to buy. That's not so bad as i thought at 1st.

[Leyton388]

I cannot see DIC going after Newcastle after spending so much time and effort into trying to get control of Livepool. Also if rumours are to be belived Shiek Mo himself has become personally involved so wants liverpool and only liverpool if that is the case. Also if the rumour about £460 million is right that is almost double of what they wanted to buy us for last year so if the have offered that it says to me they want us more than ever.