In the swirl of announcements, declarations of intent to buy Liverpool, the ins and outs of whether the China Investment Corporation is backing Kenneth Huang, and now the revelation that members of the ruling family of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, may be behind the Syrian businessman Yahya Kirdi, two crucial truths stand unmoved.
The first is that the Liverpool board, which meets tomorrow, has still not been presented with formal proposals by any bidder, together with the identity of the planned investors and documented proof that they have the money.
Despite the dramatic burst of publicity and activity around the club, Liverpool's directors have not been furnished with anything substantial to consider tomorrow and that lays bare the second incontrovertible fact. Liverpool Football Club is still, as things stand, owned by Tom Hicks and George Gillett, and owes £237m to Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia, who are charging penalty fees the longer the club is not sold, and have the right to call in their loans on 6 October.
About two years since Hicks and Gillett went looking for new investors, and four months since Martin Broughton, the British Airways chairman, was appointed as Liverpool's chairman to sell the club, no firm bid has yet been made. It is striking that no British businessman has apparently even considered buying Liverpool, despite the club's great stature and heritage, because of the scale of debts to pay and a £450m new stadium to finance. No well-known, "blue-chip" operators or corporations have emerged either, leaving supporters, the media and the board itself frantically casting around for any available information on relatively obscure figures.
Of the two which declared their interest last week, the proposed bid fronted by Kirdi has made the most consistently positive statements, and this week promised to formalise their offer within days.
A source close to that deal said yesterday that agreement in principle has been reached with Hicks and Gillett for a sale of the club to Kirdi's backers, although Dan Diamond, president of GameDay, a Canadian consultancy working with Kirdi to broker the deal, refused to confirm whether those investors are in fact from Sharjah.
"Plans are in place to close the deal shortly," the source said. "A proof of funds will accompany the closing of the deal in a form requested by Martin Broughton, the club's board and the owners. Everyone is focused on getting this done, so that the next era in the history of Liverpool can begin."
Meanwhile Marc Ganis, the US-based sports consultant working with Huang, told Sportingintelligence yesterday that CIC, the investment arm of the Chinese government, are not committed as a backer, and said no decision had been made to even present an offer to Liverpool.
Kirdi's proposed bid was met with widespread scepticism when it was announced last week, partly because of the Canadian involvement, and reports that it will involve about $600m (£380m) being paid for the club to Hicks and Gillett. That, for many fans, seemed to place Kirdi too close to the north American pair, who have outraged supporters by loading the £185m they borrowed to buy Liverpool in the first place, on to the club to repay.
Diamond, however, stated last week that Kirdi and his investors have been working on a bid to buy Liverpool since October. Kirdi, a Syrian businessman of relatively modest means based in Canada, is said to represent members of the Sharjah ruling family on various business dealings, and that has led to the conclusion that the potential investors behind him do include members of the al-Qasimi family.
If true, if they move to make a solid offer, and if that offer is accepted – the multiple layers of uncertainty in which this process is currently mired – that suggests major money from the UAE could be made available to Liverpool. Sharjah is the third largest of the Emirates, after Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and while it does not boast the gushing oil resources of Abu Dhabi, members of its ruling family do have access to substantial wealth, in an economy based on crude oil and natural gas.
The structure of the proposed deal is that the debt to RBS and Wachovia would be repaid in full, and the new stadium on Stanley Park, itself more than 10 years in the dreaming, would be financed with a 15-year mortgage on generous terms to the club.
Diamond would not discuss reports that Kirdi's investors have agreed to pay Hicks and Gillett $600m, but it has been asserted they are not seeking to pay Hicks and Gillett as little as possible, as was proposed on behalf of Huang last week. That in itself has aroused further scepticism, in a financial culture in which the emphasis is on seeking to pay as low a price as an investor can get away with. However, a source close to the Kirdi deal said the investors consider Liverpool one of the great football clubs and sporting institutions of the world, not as a distressed company in which control can be wrestled for a price hostile to Hicks and Gillett.
'The price being paid is seen as a negotiated and fair value," the source said. "The new owners will look to be involved at Liverpool for the long term, see the new stadium built, invest in the team. They see supporters as integral to the club, and intend to reach out and involve them."
That sentiment echoes the supporter-friendly message emanating from Huang yesterday, describing supporters as "key stakeholders" and pledging to meet with Spirit of Shankly-Share Liverpool, the unified group which has more than 50,000 registered supporters.
Such diplomacy from prospective buyers of a club as large as Liverpool demonstrates how formidable supporters have made themselves in modern times by organising into trusts and forging a keen, educated view of how their clubs are owned and run. Rogan Taylor, a founder member of Share Liverpool, has talked of Liverpool fans "losing their innocence" as the debts loaded on by Hicks' and Gillett's takeover became clear. SOS-SL are actively seeking to raise £50m to buy a stake in the club, in partnership with new owners, and in return to be granted representation in the running of the club.
Taylor, director of the Football Industries Group at Liverpool University, said that if the warm words for supporters being expressed by the prospective bidders translate into a solid partnership with fans by new owners, it would be: "Truly groundbreaking and mark the shift to a new era."
Before any bright future can dawn, however, the declarations of interest voiced last week must harden into solid offers backed by real and verified money. That has not happened yet, from anyone, anywhere.
"Our priority is to make sure we do not do the wrong deal," said a source close to the sale process. "At present it is not clear how many satisfactory proposals we are going to receive."
That, for all the talk and speculation, is the limbo in which Liverpool remain, laden with debt and out of the Champions League, on the threshold of a new season.
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