Boston Red Sox owner to buy Liverpool Football Club

[Scaly Spurs]

Boston Red Sox owner to buy Liverpool Football Club

By the CNN Wire StaffcnnAuthor = "By the CNN Wire Staff";
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U.S. company to buy top English club



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• The sale is conditional on approval by the Premier League
• A dispute about board membership must also be resolved first
• The amount of the sale wasn't immediately disclosed

London, England (CNN) -- Liverpool Football Club announced Wednesday that its board has agreed to sell the team to New England Sports Ventures, the company that owns baseball's Boston Red Sox.
The sale is conditional on approval from the Premier League, to which Liverpool belongs; resolution of a dispute about board membership; and other matters, Liverpool said.
The offer from NESV was one of two the club said Tuesday it had received to repay its long-term debt. It had called a board meeting Tuesday to review the bids and approve a sale.
The amount of the sale wasn't immediately disclosed, but the size of the debt is reported to be between 250 million and 280 million pounds ($397 million and $445 million).
What does the sale mean for Liverpool?
Liverpool is currently owned by two Americans, Tom Hicks and George Gillett. They took out loans in the club's name to buy it in February 2007.
NESV's philosophy is all about winning and they have fully demonstrated that at Red Sox.
--Liverpool Chairman Martin Broughton




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• cnnRelatedTopicKeys.push('Liverpool_FC'); Liverpool FC
• cnnRelatedTopicKeys.push('Boston_Red_Sox'); Boston Red Sox

Liverpool Chairman Martin Broughton said the board had met with NESV representatives over the past several weeks in Boston, London and Liverpool. He praised the company's vision for the English team.
"NESV's philosophy is all about winning and they have fully demonstrated that at Red Sox," Broughton said.
He revealed problems the board has had with Hicks and Gillett, saying the pair tried "everything" to prevent the sale.
Blog: Jumping from frying pan to fire?
"By removing the burden of acquisition debt, this offer allows us to focus on investment in the team. I am only disappointed that the owners have tried everything to prevent the deal from happening and that we need to go through legal proceedings in order to complete the sale," Broughton said.
Before Tuesday's meeting, the two owners sought to remove two board members and replace them with Mack Hicks -- reported by the Liverpool Echo to be Tom Hicks' son -- and Lori Kay McCutcheon, whom the newspaper said is vice president and financial controller of Hicks Holdings.
The second bidder was from Asia but is not linked to Kenny Huang, who led a Chinese consortium interested in investing in Liverpool this summer, the Echo reported.
CNN's Nicky Robertson in Atlanta, Georgia, contributed

[Sir X]

I refused to post this , saw this crap from last night , another yank ?

Not again.

[Gamma]

well him is a RED through and through......

[Bruce]

A Fool And His Money Are Soon Parted.....

The owner of a fu**ed up baseball team wants to buy a fu**ed up soccer team.

Now he has TWO teams which kick a ball all over the field.

Next thing you know, he will sign Andrew Flintoff as a middle reliever for the Red Sox.

[Gamma]

so bruce what do you REALLY think about hicks?

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns...ngland&cc=3888

[Hortical]

I am not a baseball fan but the Red Sox have won two championships in 6 years. How about those Brewers!

[Sir X]

Red like financially?

[Sickko]

All him socks dem red

[Bruce]

Hortical,
You haven't been following my posts too closely. As everyone knows, I AM NOT a baseball fan.

Besides, the bratwurst at the Bavarian Soccer club is world-class compared to the crap at Miller Park. The Bavarian Soccer club bratwurst costs less,is bigger, comes on a better roll, and the service is better. The beer costs less, too.

Look at the bright side, Hortical. Yao Ming will be Liverpool's starting goalie next year.

[Jangle]

Look at the bright side, Hortical. Yao Ming will be Liverpool's starting goalie next year.



Bruce yuh too wikkid!!!!

[Dunny]

I've just interviewed Martin Broughton, chairman of Liverpool since April.
And what struck me was his confidence that he can sell the club from under its owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett.
He told me that when he took the post of chairman, he received explicit undertakings that he was in charge of selling the club - and that Mr Hicks and Mr Gillett surrendered any right to block a sale to a bidder he deemed most suitable.

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But bankers tell me that if the courts rule against the transfer of Liverpool FC to the new ownership of John Henry and New England Sports Ventures, the sale will still probably go through - although via the ungainly mechanism of Royal Bank of Scotland putting Liverpool into administration (see my earlier post on how this would work).
So it looks like the parent company of the Boston Red Sox will be the proprietor of the Liverpool FC.
It is proposing to pay £300m, of which £200m would pay off the longer term bank debt provided by Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia of the US (three quarters of that £200m goes to RBS).
Another £40m would pay off other creditors, such as the local council.
And £60m would stay in the business as debt secured on the stadium plus working capital facilities.
Not even a brass farthing will go to messrs Hicks and Gillett, which means they stand to lose the £140m they've put into the club - and it's why they will do all they can to frustrate the deal.
If, as seems likely, the deal goes through one way or another, Liverpool will once again have relatively modest debts - around £60m -which, as I've said, should feel like something of a liberation.
And Mr Broughton told me he was confident that the new owner wouldn't simply take money out by foisting new borrowings on the club as and when financial markets recover sufficiently - though there aren't any cast iron guarantees to that effect.
Nor has he extracted a binding commitment to build the new Stanley Park stadium. But Mr Broughton pointed to the track record of John Henry in developing sporting facilities in an imaginative way.
Mr Broughton believes that Mr Henry wants to own Liverpool for what the Kop would see as the right reasons - namely to turn it again into a winning club on the field, as the sine qua non of commercial success.
Mr Henry's record at the Boston Red Sox - which has won two World Series under his ownership after decades of ignominy and failure - would make that a plausible assertion.
But although globalisation is increasingly a phenomenon in sport as well in finance, there are still huge cultural differences between sports clubs in different countries. Mr Henry will find much about Liverpool FC unfamiliar, even alien.
So perhaps astutely, Mr Broughton refused to make any prediction of when silverware would once more grace the Liverpool trophy cabinet, to follow the silver raining into Royal Bank of Scotland's coffers.

[Mosiah]

beginning of the end!

[Zeppo]

I refused to post this , saw this crap from last night , another yank ?

Not again.

Soon the entire Premier League will be ours!

AH HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha ha........................

[Sir X]

That would be good if pool is left out of it.

[Sickko]

The Red Sox is one of the most successful sports franchises any where in the world... our sentiments for our teams cant engender profits and make the team survive in harsh economic times and thus is the Rdc Sox wants to buy the Liverpool franchise you shoud be happy and kip yu wutliss, bad mind Anti-Merkan sentiments to yu damn self... right HL and Draws...oops Jawge