Hus

First job of the new owners should be to get rid - i really dont want him let loose with any funds in Jan

Yep....

Yep he has been pretty much on the money (excuse the pun) so far with alot of the takeover stuff - must have good sources

V true, I expect it will be on LFC WWW soon too

Not quite sure where this Broughton interview is going to hit first, radio tv etc...does anyone know if there is a industrial precedent set for takeover matters like this? I saw someone on Twitter mention Easyjet but I am not sure of the relevance

Sure, we heard about them attempting to refinance based on assets etc a few months back (june?) but if true this would be another attempt - they would have required legal backing to do so as they are in direct conflict with the interests of the shareholders. Ah well, I thought it was a interesting bit of info. Right off to bed!

Eh? I have no idea whether he has been mainly right or wrong in the past, I thought it was an interesting bit of info and shared it.

LFC board at war as multi-millionaire John W Henry bids for the club Read More http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-fc/liverpool-fc-news/2010/10/06/lfc-board-at-war-as-multi-millionaire-john-w-henry-bids-for-the-club-100252-27410865/#ixzz11X2y3Oty LFC board at war as multi-millionaire John W Henry bids for the club Oct 6 2010 By John Thompson & Ben Schofield Comments (5) Recommend (3) * 1 * 2 * next The Shankly Gates at Anfield The Shankly Gates at Anfield 300 WAR has broken out in the campaign to rescue Liverpool Football Club from its ownership crisis. The club issued a dramatic statement late last night saying it has received two top class bids to buy the Reds. But hours before an Anfield board meeting was called to discuss them yesterday, American co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett sensationally tried to sack managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre. Instead the Americans tried to replace the Reds’ two top boardroom executives – both lifelong Liverpool fans – with their own new people – Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutcheon. Mack Hicks is the son of Texan Tom Hicks senior, while McCutcheon is vice-president and financial controller of Hicks Holdings. The ECHO can confirm one of the bidders for the Reds involves the owner of the Boston Reds Sox baseball team, John W Henry, a multi-millionaire Wall Street trader. The second bidder is from Asia but is not linked to Kenny Huang, who led a Chinese consortium interested in investing in Liverpool this summer. The ECHO understands a sale is very close, unless Hicks and Gillett succeed with their legal challenge to the make-up of the board. The fact that it is two members of the Hicks camp the owners are trying to shoehorn on to the board also suggests George Gillett’s influence at Anfield is now minimal. No-one at Anfield would today comment, confirm the claims or discuss any details at all regarding the official statement issued. All three key parties – Hicks, Gillett and the three remaining board members – have consulted lawyers to try to break the stalemate. The ECHO understands meetings continued all night at Anfield, with the non-owners on the board clearly maintaining control of the club’s official website which issued last night’s extraordinary statement. It read: "The Board of Directors have received two excellent financial offers to buy the Club that would repay all its long-term debt. "A Board meeting was called today to review these bids and approve a sale. Shortly prior to the meeting, the owners – Tom Hicks and George Gillett – sought to remove managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre from the Board, seeking to replace them with Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutheon. "This matter is now subject to legal review and a further announcement will be made in due course. "Meanwhile Martin Broughton, Christian Purslow and Ian Ayre continue to explore every possible route to achieving a sale of the Club at the earliest opportunity." The hugely dramatic development clearly pitches at least two of Anfield’s non-owner directors – Purslow and Ayre – publicly against the American co-owners. Hicks and Gillett are due to repay their loans – belatedly taken out to buy the club three years ago – later this month. Last week Purslow made it clear in an interview that the Reds’ non-owner directors would firmly resist any bid by the Americans to refinance those loans. Hicks and Gillett are, it seems, furious that a coup attempt is now being made to drive them out of Anfield, without them getting the huge profits they had hoped for from a sale of the crisis-hit club. The pair, who have been the target of a long-running fans campaign to oust them led by the Spirit of Shankly and others, agreed publicly to sanction a sale of the club in spring after an offer of investment from the New York based Rhone group (£110m for 40%) was rejected by them. It all means the battle for the future of Britain’s most successful ever football club may well now be fought out in the courts, who must decide who holds sway going forward – Hicks and Gillett or Purslow, Ayre and Broughton. British Airways chairman Broughton was brought in by Barclays to oversee the sale process. Liverpool are currently paying between £30m and £40m a year in crippling interest payments to service the Hicks and Gillett loans. Today fans union Spirit of Shankly said supporters will want to probe any bidder to make sure the club ends up in the right hands. James McKenna, spokesman for SoS, said: "Liverpool is engulfed in a board room war. "The club statement underlines the need we have – Hicks and Gillett aren’t good enough for Liverpool Football Club."

atk on TLW - I've been reliably informed that Ayre, Purslow and Broughton this week blocked a refinancing offer that Hicks and Gillett put to the board. They were using the ground Melwood etc up as clout to get refinance.

True but we are alot wiser now, plus though there is alot of press about who one of the bidders is...we dont know if there bid has been accepted or they are the ones. We need to focus on getting these two cancers out first.

True - if the board were able to block requests by the shareholders in relation to refinance then hopefully the same can be applied to there attempts at ousting members of the BOD without proper reason. I would assume the board could also argue that the reason for them looking to oust them is so that they can refinance as was previously attempted.

Agree with this, probably the reason for all the media blackout the independant board needed to be seen to be acting a certain way. Anything else could have been used against them as part of a legal challenge.

Thanks - was posted on here too from Rawk iirc, if the articles are current and they stand upto legal challenge then it should be the end for H&G, the only thing i can think of in favour of H&G is CP & IA are not acting in the best interest of the shareholders.

That to me says a bid was going to be accepted by the board, they moved to oust CP, IA this was refused by MB - hence the legal challenge. I would also like to think the offer has been accepted but thats just me speculating atm.

Can we concentrate on getting rid of the current owners before we start digging up the dirt on the new ones?

That wasnt what i was expecting, we all know they want more money the feckers. But I thought there maybe something about the board being reshuffled etc, its all bravado atm...if he cant remove the board then he should be powerless to stop this now

f*** Expecting the worst, we have rejected any offers, dont intend to sell Liverpool - we are here for the long term b****x

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/650f57d0-d0cf-11df-a426-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss Baseball team pitches for Liverpool FC By Roger Blitz, Leisure Industries Correspondent Published: October 5 2010 23:35 | Last updated: October 5 2010 23:35 Open warfare broke out at Liverpool FC after the club announced that plans for directors to discuss two “excellent” offers to buy the Premier League club, including one from the owners of the Boston Red Sox, were preceded by the current US owners’ efforts to remove two independent board members. New England Sports Ventures, the holding company for the baseball team, tabled an offer to cover the £280m of debt owed by Liverpool owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett to Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia. The offer on the table is believed to be £300m. In a statement on the club’s website on Tuesday night, Liverpool FC said: “The board of directors have received two excellent financial offers to buy the club that would repay all its long-term debt. “A board meeting was called today to review these bids and approve a sale. Shortly prior to the meeting, the owners – Tom Hicks and George Gillett – sought to remove managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre from the board, seeking to replace them with Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutcheon.” Mack Hicks is a son of Tom Hicks and a vice-president of his father’s Hicks Holdings sports and real estate group. Ms McCutcheon is also a vice-president of Hicks Holdings. The statement added that the matter was subject to legal review and that the three independent board directors – chairman Martin Broughton, Mr Purslow and Mr Ayre – would continue to explore the club’s sale at the earliest opportunity. According to people with knowledge of the protracted and bitter sale process, the independent directors had planned to discuss the offers with the owners on a conference call, and hoped to move the discussion onto details about which of the two to accept. But the owners, who have placed a much higher valuation on the club, were said to have rejected both offers, a response that was said by one person to have been expected by the independent board members. Mr Hicks is believed to remain determined to refinance the debt, although he has had one proposal rejected by the independent board members in June after they took legal advice. The deadline for the repayment of the owners’ loan is Friday week. “The owners are trying to block this sales process,” one person said. According to another person with knowledge of the situation, NESV’s owner John Henry is in the UK with senior management figures with the intention of “closing the deal”. While NESV has been interested in Liverpool for some weeks, the Far East interest is believed to have become known only in the past week. NESV’s thinking is that Liverpool would be another iconic sports brand to go with the Boston Red Sox and Roush Fenway Racing, one of the pre-eminent teams in Nascar racing. But given the hostility of Liverpool fans to the Gillett-Hicks ownership, NESV is believed to be sensitive to any anti-US sentiment from supporters.

Another spin on the matter, the Board have accepted the "asian" bid and the US contingent are leaking it to get some media attention/pressure on the board to change there mind? I know its flaky but who knows

Wouldnt he stay till the sale was ratified and confirmed? If they have already approved the sale (huge f***ing if there) then it makes sense to some degree but wouldnt he need to be present for the outcome of any legal challenge? Who knows, my head is spinning atm

I reckon they could do if it was secured on the club, future income etc etc...the board are key in this as we all know

RIght this is useful - Jenny Kulshaw (some financial bod) is ask Rogan Taylor about how the board is set up...tell us something new ffs Great thats exactly what i wanted to hear - though now i am really worried about the rumours re MB resigning...

On r5 now -

From: http://blogs.news.sky.com/kleinman/Post:71fcbf72-08c6-47ac-8dc5-90a1535f7124 I also have a little more on the NESV proposal. I understand that Robert Tilliss, one of the partners of Inner Circle Sports, the New York-based investment and advisory firm which is advising NESV, helped secure control of Liverpool for Hicks and Gillett back in 2007 hmmmmmmmm

True - I reckon Cecil will leak it at some point, though Tariq Panja on twitter reckons the US bid has been accepted...maybe thats why its out in the open. Who knows