DIC latest - the largely wild speculation thread

[Zambian_Red]

He's lied about plenty more than that mate. Don't know where you've been. Personally (can't speak for others on this site) I don't want DIC because they are owned by the 5th richest person in the World.

The main reason for wanting a takeover was to take the team and the club to the top level (on the field and in marketing etc). However, the last year has been an absolute joke. They said they weren't following a Glazer model, yet their model is even worse than that.

The club is saddled with unbelievable amounts of debt it's shocking. DIC should be our owners now. So what if they took a long time over Due Diligence...it was better than doing it in a week or so like Gillett and then ****ing up after.

Al Ansari shone out because he was one of us. Comes to the games, was a Liverpool fan. Took time out to talk to Gerrard, Rafa and Carragher and explain their plans. Even Gerrard and Carra spoke highly of DIC

I'm sorry, but there is no comparison between Hicks and DIC. Hicks has ****ed up time and again and shown he doesn't care about the club. All this **** going on the evening before we play Inter is a joke and he shows how little he cares about the club.

The sooner Hicks gets out the better. I hope the Sheikh ****s him up big time now and doesn't even leave the cock with 51%. As the Yanks would say, smoke Hicks' motherf*cking boots

This ****er has put 350m debt on the club which has to be refinanced in about a years time. At the moment we are paying around 25/30m in interest. We hardly make any profit above 20m a year how is this moron able to cough paying interest.

To get rid of this 350m debt obviously it will be paid by revenues coming into the club in the form of merchanside sales/tv money/champions league run and most importantly gate receipts. On top this we have to pay players wages and transfer budgets.

I can only imagine that if our revenue can sustain paying this debt plus interest we need a bigger stadium and i wonder what year will it be in when we move into the new stadium.

We need another 300m to fund the cost of the new stadium so more debt Hicks wont pay from his pocket, he hasnt used a pence since he took over the club.

If he is willing to buy off GG surely he would want what DIC offered even that he comtemplated taking an 80m profit. The current economic situation in the US will make it difficult for this idiot to get a loan of this nature due to tthw fact of the credit crunch and recession. Someone to come up with 200m pounds to buy off GG is not a lose change they would want to see a return on thier investment and would they be willing to wait 5/10 years. I dont see Liverpool making huge profits as the scums/arsenal until we move into the new stadium a higher capacity and to be honest it will take another 5 years before the stadium gets built.

All that has been going on is talk talk talk but no action i really want these two american cunts to taek the money DIC are offering and **** off to where ever they came from. Hicks does not have the money to pay for the stdium nor to buy out GG and nore to back 100% in the transfer market all he has done is borrow and put the dent on the club.

[Craig_H]

I dont get this really...

Hicks has 1st option on Gillett's shares, ok then. So DIC make an offer, and once that offer is deemed acceptable to Gillett, he informs Hicks that he then has to match the offer to gain his 1st refusal - if he cant, the shares can then be sold to someone else.

Why is it so difficult for DIC? Just make an offer to Gillett, that Hicks cant match and bingo. Or not?

[carlton]

We're in no mans land really, if Hicks is serious in keeping 50%.

If Gillet wants out he is ****ed. The ridiculous money offered by DIC will keep Gillet from accepting anything less. But he aint exactly want to go and spend money on LFC if he wants out, meaning Hicks will not spend anything either.

This freezes the value, and as the re financing deal approaches this puts Hicks in a poor situation. Then again Gillet may decide to stay, but with their apparent poor working relationship I don't see how this is possible.

Hicks veto must have a time limit attached surely? If GG was desperate to sell Hicks couldnt veto endlessley.

[peekay]

Hicks veto must have a time limit attached surely? If GG was desperate to sell Hicks couldnt veto endlessley.

I dont have any inside information or any knowledge about corporate takeovers but thats the question I am wondering myself. If I am investing in a project along with a group of people, I would definitely not give the other people the right to veto when I can sell indefinitely. It makes no sense. At the very least I would like to sell on my terms and not others.

Again this is from common sense point of view and with no knowledge of how big organizations work.

[peekay]

I dont get this really...

Hicks has 1st option on Gillett's shares, ok then. So DIC make an offer, and once that offer is deemed acceptable to Gillett, he informs Hicks that he then has to match the offer to gain his 1st refusal - if he cant, the shares can then be sold to someone else.

Why is it so difficult for DIC? Just make an offer to Gillett, that Hicks cant match and bingo. Or not?

Or maybe they are waiting to watch what Hicks coughs up and then up their offer to Gillett.

[DannyMan2006]

I dont have any inside information or any knowledge about corporate takeovers but thats the question I am wondering myself. If I am investing in a project along with a group of people, I would definitely not give the other people the right to veto when I can sell indefinitely. It makes no sense. At the very least I would like to sell on my terms and not others.

Again this is from common sense point of view and with no knowledge of how big organizations work.

On the outset though it protects both parties.

It means neither can stiff the other one when a deal is done. I agree I would want protection just like you, but it goes both ways and so neither party is being hard done by.

[peekay]

On the outset though it protects both parties.

It means neither can stiff the other one when a deal is done. I agree I would want protection just like you, but it goes both ways and so neither party is being hard done by.

I understand. This is a post by a poster called RaolD on ynwa.tv who seems to know a bit about this subject:

"It depends upon the nature of the "veto". If the veto is a clause which requires any share transfer to be approved a resolution of the directors and/or shareholders, then Hicks could block the sale and DIC would have no right to participate in the company. On the other hand, if the clause is more limited e.g. is a pre-emption clause, then Gillett could sell to DIC but only after the shares are offered to Hicks. Otherwise Hicks could still refuse to acknowledge and accept the transfer.

What appears to be clear is that Gillett wants out and so Hicks has a major problem since the veto could also be used to hamper any attempt by him to take control of the company or to bring in third party investors other than DIC. More significantly the breakdown in his relationship with Gillett means that Hicks cannot be sure of ready access to the LFC revenues (especially if the Board of LFC refuses to sanction payments to, or on behalf of, Kop Holdings).

The reference by Hicks to the club being run by committee is telling. The statement reveals Hicks' worst fear, namely that his "partner" will not sanction the payments from the club revenues and that he is therefore exposed under the guarantees that he gave for the refinancing. Most companies are run by committee - its called a board of directors!"

[DannyMan2006]

I understand. This is a post by a poster called RaolD on ynwa.tv who seems to know a bit about this subject:

"It depends upon the nature of the "veto". If the veto is a clause which requires any share transfer to be approved a resolution of the directors and/or shareholders, then Hicks could block the sale and DIC would have no right to participate in the company. On the other hand, if the clause is more limited e.g. is a pre-emption clause, then Gillett could sell to DIC but only after the shares are offered to Hicks. Otherwise Hicks could still refuse to acknowledge and accept the transfer.

What appears to be clear is that Gillett wants out and so Hicks has a major problem since the veto could also be used to hamper any attempt by him to take control of the company or to bring in third party investors other than DIC. More significantly the breakdown in his relationship with Gillett means that Hicks cannot be sure of ready access to the LFC revenues (especially if the Board of LFC refuses to sanction payments to, or on behalf of, Kop Holdings).

The reference by Hicks to the club being run by committee is telling. The statement reveals Hicks' worst fear, namely that his "partner" will not sanction the payments from the club revenues and that he is therefore exposed under the guarantees that he gave for the refinancing. Most companies are run by committee - its called a board of directors!"

Cheers for that, makes sense to me. I wish we knew the answers instead of playing a guessing game though.

[carlton]

om Hicks terminates Liverpool talks with DIC

By David Bond
Last Updated: 1:13am GMT 11/03/2008

Have your say Read comments

The battle for control of Liverpool took yet another twist last night as the club's co-owner, Tom Hicks, unexpectedly announced he was terminating negotiations on a partnership with Dubai International Capital.

Coming on the eve of Liverpool's crucial Champions League tie against Inter Milan tonight, the timing of this latest development could hardly be worse.

Tom Hicks
No deal: Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks has called off talks with DIC

Following talks between Hicks' executives and senior officials from the sovereign wealth fund in Dubai yesterday, the Texan businessman revealed the discussions had stalled over DIC's demands for an equal say in how the club would be run.

Hicks went on to state he would now use his power of veto, under the terms of his joint ownership agreement with co-chairman George Gillett, to block any sale of his 50 per cent holding to DIC. "Based on a meeting held earlier today in Dubai between my representatives and officials of Dubai International Capital, I have decided to terminate any further discussions with DIC regarding their possible purchase of a minority stake in the club," said Hicks.

Although the move by Hicks would appear to deal a devastating blow to DIC's £400 million takeover ambitions, it is unlikely to be the end of the saga.

And while a spokesman for DIC, the investment arm of the Dubai ruling family, refused to comment on Hicks' remarks last night, it is understood they remain as determined as ever to push through a separate £170 million deal with Gillett, agreed in principle late last Friday. It is believed Gillett's lawyers were again in London yesterday working on the deal.

While Hicks does have first refusal on Gillett's 50 per cent stake, DIC question whether he has the power to block him from selling his shares. That is a contentious issue which is only likely to be settled by putting it to the test.

After months of difficult negotiations and uncertainty, the relationship between Hicks and DIC looked to be heading for a peaceful resolution last week.

With DIC prepared to consider a power-sharing arrangement whereby they would buy 49 per cent of the club from Gillett with the other one per cent going to Hicks to guarantee him majority control, both sides headed in to yesterday's talks full of hope.
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But talks broke down quickly once it became clear Hicks would not drop his demand to retain full control of the club, leaving DIC as a silent minority investor. "DIC made it clear that if they invested in the club, they would want it to be managed by committee," Hicks said. "Based on my 13 years of successful experience as an owner of professional sports teams, and based in particular on the situation at Liverpool Football Club over the past year, it is clear to me that such a committee approach would not be in the best interest of the club or of the club's loyal and passionate supporters."

With any hopes of a partnership with DIC fading, Hicks said he would step up his search for an alternative investor to buy out Gillett's stake.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2008/03/11/sfnfro111.xml

DIC would have planned for this scenario as part of their risk assessment so their response will be telling. If Hicks is able to find an investor who will put in hundreds of million of dollars and expect no say in the mangement of the club he is not in dreamland but cloudcukooland. Perhaps he has gone mad, maybe the other directors can find a way to have him declared insane so he can be removed.

DIC should call him out and test the veto in court, then again, they can afford to wait. Its the damage that happens to the club whilst they are waiting that s the problem especially with the texan mother*****r mouthing off.

[Sarb]

Agree with all the comments. Hicks is the biggest ****er out there causing such mayhem the evening before a big game. Idiot

[pezzzer]

I dont get this really...

Hicks has 1st option on Gillett's shares, ok then. So DIC make an offer, and once that offer is deemed acceptable to Gillett, he informs Hicks that he then has to match the offer to gain his 1st refusal - if he cant, the shares can then be sold to someone else.

Why is it so difficult for DIC? Just make an offer to Gillett, that Hicks cant match and bingo. Or not?

i think thats pretty much what theve done, hicks was proberbly trying to negotiate there offer price for gg's shares, remember he would have to match that offer but when dic start trying to call the shots hicks throws his toys out the pram.

there is absaloutly no way hicks can have a veto on ggs shares indenfinately, there not his to sell/buy, if that was the case then gg might of well just bought the shares and put them in hick's name, which he didnt.

there both there to make money so to sell your shares at a key time is pivitol to that, dic arent daft and know only too well hicks cant match there offer.

[Cormack74]

Nothing very new tbh, but Radio 5 this morning are reporting that DIC still believe that they can use legal means to secure Gillett's shares.

[AFII]

From RAWK....

March 11, 2008
Buyout Industry Staggers Under Weight of Debt

By MICHAEL J. de la MERCED
With their big paydays and bigger egos, private equity moguls came to symbolize an era of hyper-wealth on Wall Street.

Now their fortunes are plummeting.

Celebrated buyout firms like the Blackstone Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, hailed only a year ago for their deal-making prowess, are seeing their profits collapse as the credit crisis spreads through the financial markets.

Investors fear that some of the companies that these firms bought on credit could, like millions of American homeowners, begin to buckle under their heavy debts now that a recession seems almost certain. The buyout lords themselves suddenly confront gaping multibillion-dollar losses on their investments.

On a day in which the stock market tumbled to its lowest point in two years and rumors flew that a major Wall Street firm might be in trouble, Blackstone said Monday that its profit had plunged.

The firm said earnings tumbled 89 percent in the final three months of 2007 and warned that the deep freeze in the credit markets — and, by extension, in the private equity industry — was unlikely to thaw soon.

“They see the handwriting on the wall,” said Martin S. Fridson, a leading expert on junk bonds, said of buyout firms. “They’re staring into the jaws of hell.”

It is a major turn of events for Blackstone and its chief executive, Stephen A. Schwarzman, who took the firm public last year at the height of the buyout binge. On paper, Mr. Schwarzman has personally lost $3.9 billion as the price of Blackstone’s stock sank.

Even so, Mr. Schwarzman is still worth billions, more than rich enough to pledge $100 million to the New York Public Library, as he plans to do Tuesday.

In recent years private equity firms have bought thousands of companies, mostly with borrowed money.

Blackstone and others argue they can run these businesses more efficiently — and therefore more profitably — than they could as public companies. Now, the bankers and investors who financed the boom in corporate takeovers are running for the exits. Loans and junk bonds that deal makers used to pay for the acquisitions — debts that must be repaid by the companies, not the deal makers — are sinking in value.

The speed and ferocity of the industry’s reversal have taken even Wall Street by surprise. On Monday, Carlyle Capital, a highly leveraged fund linked to another buyout firm, the Washington-based Carlyle Group, confronted the prospect of insolvency. Carlyle’s troubles, along with rumors that Bear Stearns might be running short of cash, helped drive stocks lower. Bear Stearns denied the rumors.

But companies far from Wall Street are feeling the pain of the private equity crisis. In 2006, for example, Freescale Semiconductor, which makes computer chips, found itself the object of private equity’s affection and the subject of the biggest buyout battle of all time in the technology industry.

Two groups of private equity firms vied for the microchip manufacturer, a spinoff of Motorola that builds most of the computer chips for that company’s cellphones. Ultimately, the winning group, led by Blackstone, paid a staggering $17.6 billion, most of that with borrowed money.

That was then. Now Freescale is plagued by falling demand from Motorola and billions of dollars in debt related to its takeover. It replaced its chief executive nearly three weeks ago, and its junk bonds recently traded at levels that suggest the company might be unable to pay its debts. The company has said that while times are challenging, it can meet its debts.

“No one saw this kind of outcome,” Michael Holland, chairman of the New York investment firm Holland & Company, and a former Blackstone executive, said of the buyout industry’s troubles.

Freescale is far from alone, as the private equity industry reels from the shocks to the credit markets and the broader economy. Since last summer, financing for the multibillion dollars deals has withered, depriving buyout firms of the headlines and, more important, the returns to which they had grown accustomed.

Bonds and loans of newly private companies as diverse as the Realogy Corporation, a Minneapolis-based real estate company, and OSI Restaurant Partners, which owns the Outback Steakhouse chain, have plunged so far in value that bankers consider the debt distressed.

While these and many other companies are current on their debts, their bonds now trade at 70 or 80 cents on the dollar, suggesting investors are worried about these businesses’ financial health. Some bonds are selling at even lower prices, and a few companies have gone bankrupt.

As a financial firm, Blackstone is just one of many that have suffered over the past eight months. But unlike banks and mortgage lenders, Blackstone is the only major American buyout firm that is publicly traded. Its stumbles are more clearly tracked than any of its peers, as shown by a stock price that has dropped more than 50 percent since its debut.

On Monday, Blackstone reported soft results in its private equity and corporate real estate businesses, its two biggest divisions. Stripped of the cheap debt that girds its deal making, Blackstone said it will now focus on smaller transactions. Yet the firm has not struck any deal over $2 billion since last July, when it announced a $25 billion takeover of Hilton Hotels. Since then, it has failed to complete two buyouts, those of PHH, a mortgage lender, and Alliance Data Systems, a credit card processor.

Blackstone also took an accounting charge related to its investment in the Financial Guaranty Investment Corporation, a troubled bond insurance company.

But private equity firm’s problems now extend well beyond themselves. Banks, for example, are saddled with billions of dollars of buyout-related debt they cannot sell, serving as the next possible wave of write-downs after the subprime mortgage debacle. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers are currently holding what some analysts estimate is $130 billion in leveraged loans, or those supporting private equity deals.

And the companies that private equity firms have acquired may be the next to suffer. Emboldened by the availability of cheap debt, private equity firms borrowed more and more as they paid higher prices to strike more deals. That has left many companies like Freescale to cope with more debt to pay off.

Surveying junk debt offerings since 2002, Mr. Fridson found that companies taken private tended to suffer more distress than their peers. According to his firm, FridsonVision, Blackstone had the fourth most-distressed companies of major private equity firms, with nearly 34.8 percent of its holdings falling into that category compared with the average of 27.7 percent.

Calling a bottom to the industry’s problems is a notoriously difficult task, even for sophisticated investors like Blackstone. Executives from the firm argue that these are times to buy things cheaply, be they stakes in companies or real estate properties.

Blackstone recently raised $1.4 billion from investors for a fund devoted to buying bonds and loans at fire sale prices. But in a conference call on Monday, Hamilton E. James, the firm’s president, said the fund is “100 percent dry powder” and so far has not been tapped for investments. “Our view is that things will get worse before they get better,” Mr. James said.

[kopdan]

Not sure i'm looking forward to DIC being on board when Hicks doesnt want it.

Would rather they were good mates being in charge. Does it mean more spats in the press IF they get in?

[AFII]

From Dmjn......

One more thing, that is EXCLUSIVE only to this forum at the moment:

Sources have suggested to me in the last 24 hours that Hicks 'recently' approached ex Liverpool suitor Robert Kraft to see if he would consider buying Gilletts shares out right.

However I was told that the idea was seen as fantasy by the Kraft Group & was rebuked.

http://forum.football.co.uk/viewtopi...1466117a324e67