Takeover not as close as expected

[Resu]

Liverpool.no has a interesting piece on the take-over.
According to Arabian Business Weekly a deal is further of than most seem to thing. the problem is the price Moores has put on the club.
There is also doubt about how much of the club they`ll buy. This comes from Liverpool.no sources in, or around, the club.
Link

So my guess is that only new player we`ll see in january is an aussie.
And maybe Gillette is still in the race.

[paulc]

Liverpool.no has a interesting piece on the take-over.
According to Arabian Business Weekly a deal is further of than most seem to thing. the problem is the price Moores has put on the club.
There is also doubt about how much of the club they`ll buy. This comes from Liverpool.no sources in, or around, the club.
Link

So my guess is that only new player we`ll see in january is an aussie.
And maybe Gillette is still in the race.

cheers mate

even if DIC bought us there would be no funds for january and to be honest not sure who we could get in Jan

[Jan-Erik]

Investment saga continous?

According to Liverpool.no, the deal with DIC is far from done. They say the arabs feel Moores is asking for too much money. They want a better price for his shares. Have anyone else read about this?

[stringy]

Whats liverpool.no ?

[lfc4ever]

Yes, yes & yes.

At least 2 other threads, but thanks all the same.

[CharlieMansonsSquint]

Can we not just wait for an official announcement?

Granted that site is well informed, but still.

[animal magic]

yeah i read it i am sure a price can be agreed otherwise moores will look bad regarding the fans and holding out for too much money

[Red Chilli]

Feckin tight arse arabs

[stringy]

its ok. i see now.

[red g]

Whats liverpool.no ?

0151

[Red Chilli]

Bwah hahahahaha!

FLMAO

[Rashid]

Torby from that site knows Parry.

[CAD]

It says that the takeover won't happen until January...

It says that Moores wants too much for his shares and that it's NOT a given what kind of percentage they will end up buying!

[Red_Polo]

It says that the takeover won't happen until January...

It says that Moores wants too much for his shares and that it's NOT a given what kind of percentage they will end up buying!

My God. It's almost sensible!

[CAD]

My God. It's almost sensible!

My post (for once) or Moores demands?

Good one in the Guard:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/12/13/moores_the_merrier_at_liverpoo.html

Moores the merrier at Liverpool's new era
Liverpool claim their proposed £450m takeover deal will not rob them of their traditional values.
David ConnDecember 13, 2006 12:30 AM
If we were not becoming weirdly accustomed to checking Forbes' billionaires list whenever a football club announces takeover talks, it would feel more bizarre, freakish even, to find Liverpool arguing they are a perfect fit for the investment vehicle of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai.

Yet ever since the news broke that Dubai International Capital is inspecting Liverpool's books in contemplation of a £450m deal, the club has been keen to stress that its proud culture, awoken in the Shankly-Merseybeat 1960s, formed in succeeding years of glittering success, then bonded in grief after the Hillsborough disaster, will not be hollowed by absentee oil barons looking for a dinar.

Club sources say that in the three-year search for the money to build a new 60,000-seat stadium with a projected cost that has risen to £200m, Rick Parry, Liverpool's chief executive, began to target Dubai investors because he believes the principality has been built with quality and an eye on the long term. Almost painfully aware of Bill Shankly's principle that there is a "Liverpool way" of conducting the club, with core values of respect, Parry and the chairman, David Moores, said they did not want it to become one individual's plaything, subjected to the short-term greed of stock market investors, or be lumbered with the kind of debt mountain looming over today's good times at Old Trafford.

So it might disappoint some that although the Sheikh is one of the world's richest men - check your Forbes - the £450m will not be chucked at a bunch of new players. The club will have to make money for the Dubai investors, which means more commercial activity and no guarantee that ticket prices will not rise above their present £30-£32 a match.

However, Parry is said to be encouraged that DIC and Sameer al-Ansari, its Liverpool-supporting chief executive whom he met for the first time at the club's Champions League victory in Istanbul, understand the culture. At Liverpool they expect to be winning league championships and for the manager, players and staff to attend the annual memorial service to the 96 people who died at Hillsborough. Despite falling behind in the Premier League era, Liverpool still pride themselves on being a traditional football club and not turning into a plc with a football department.

Moores is soaked in this mythology. The well-born son of the Littlewoods pools and retailing family looking, with his mullet and moustache, like one of Harry Enfield's caricature scousers, sees himself as a Kop-ite and has been suffering sleepless nights, we are told, worrying about selling the club.

Yet Moores is set to make a lot of money for himself if the deal goes through. Of DIC's proposed £450m, around £200m, which is likely to be borrowed, will be needed to build the stadium, and Liverpool's debts are around £100m. The rest, £157m, will be paid to the shareholders. Moores has 51% of the shares, so that means he will personally make a little under £80m.

To understand the wave of football club sales, it is important to see both narratives: the buyers, rich men or corporations believing they can make money from English football's global media rights, and the sellers, local chairmen-owners who bought their shares for much less around the dawn of the Premiership era. Then the clubs were still seen as temples of belonging, and making money from them was not what chairmen were supposed to do.

Moores worked for the family company for a while but he never reached a senior position. He then inherited part of the family fortune, including some shares in Liverpool. He is, by his own admission, not a businessman, was always more interested in music and football, and as a chairman is said to be desperately thin-skinned, always worrying what the fans will think. "He can get depressed by two hostile letters in the Liverpool Echo," mused somebody close to him, fondly.

When Liverpool needed money to develop Anfield post the Taylor Report, they rejected the stock market floats that were the fashionable way of raising money and making shareholders richer. Instead, in June 1994, Moores paid around £8m for 15,164 new shares in a rights issue that raised £9.3m.

He was the exception, an owner putting money in, but in negotiations for investment over recent years a full price has been sought. That, ultimately, caused the withdrawal of the bid two years ago from Steve Morgan, the property developer, hotelier and Liverpool supporter who believed more of his £70m investment for 60% of the club should go in as new money, rather than in paying millions to Moores and the other shareholders. Liverpool are not commenting while DIC looks at the books, but club sources say that although Moores stands to make £80m, it is not his main motivation.

That, we are told, has been finding Liverpool a responsible and nurturing partner, which they believe they have, although DIC is uncompromisingly commercial and will require the club to furnish the interest on any borrowings and generate a return. Parry believes it will look for this from long-term growth in the club's value, rather than taking money out annually in dividends.

The Football Association, age-old guardians of football's values now cowering beneath the Premiership's wealth and power, says nothing about the implications of such takeovers. However, Uefa says it fears for the competitive balance if it comes down to which club has the richest billionaire.

At Liverpool the fans are monumentally sentimental, but they know their history and understand that money talks. The Shankly reawakening came only with the help of some Moores' money in the 1960s. Liverpool was one of the few clubs originally formed as a commercial venture. John Houlding, a brewer, was left with an empty Anfield in 1892 after Everton left protesting about the rent. He hired 11 Scots, all professionals, the "team of Macs," to fill Anfield and make money.

Critics of modern football's turbo-capitalism look to an ideal where clubs are member-owned and the money is shared more evenly. Liverpool fans are more immediately concerned not to fall further behind Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal and so far they appear persuaded that their heritage is not being sold. This was poetically expressed last week by one fan on the Red All Over the Land fanzine website:

"If you think old Shanks'd be turning in his grave, think again, get a grip lad, you're wrong. Behave!"

What outgoing owners received from sales

£93m

Amount Martin Edwards made from selling Manchester United shares between 1991 and 2004

£80m

Amount David Moores stands to make by selling his 51% of Liverpool to Dubai International Capital

£33.4m

Terence Brown's receipts from selling his West Ham shares last month to Eggert Magnusson and Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson

£24m

Amount Doug Ellis received from selling Aston Villa shares; £4m when Villa floated in 1996 and £20m by selling the rest to Randy Lerner

£17m

Paid to Ken Bates for Chelsea by Roman Abramovich, July 2003. Bates had bought Chelsea for £1 in 1982