- Liverpool agree to sell to New England Sports Ventures
- Sale conditional on resolution of board membership dispute
- Major creditor RBS approves of proposed sale - source
The Liverpool board has agreed to sell the club to the owners of baseball's Boston Red Sox but the fate of England's most successful side could yet be decided in the courts as a bitter ownership dispute rages on. The English Premier League club said it had accepted an offer from the New England Sports Ventures (NESV) but the deal is unlikely to be a straightforward one as the club could first face a legal challenge from its current owners.
On Tuesday, Americans Tom Hicks and George Gillett sought to replace two members of the five-man board with their own people in a final bid to retain control with the BBC quoting the pair as saying they would resist any sale that undervalued the club. Local media reports have suggested that Hicks and Gillett were looking for around 600 million pounds but the proposed deal for the debt-ridden club is worth 300 million pounds. The Americans would also not have been happy to discover that the sale to NESV has the support of the club's major creditor Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), according to a source familiar with the situation.
Liverpool Chairman Martin Broughton said he was disappointed the current owners had "tried everything to prevent the deal from happening" but added the agreement offered a good solution for a side enduring its worst start to a season for more than half a century. "I am delighted that we have been able to successfully conclude the sale process, which has been thorough and extensive," Broughton said in a statement on the club's website.
The legal dispute over board membership will be a key part of whether the sale actually goes ahead, although with an October 15th deadline looming for the RBS debt to be refinanced, advantage seems to be with the prospective owners rather than incumbents. The five-times European champions owe 237 million pounds ($377.3 million) to RBS, who could decide to take effective control of the club if the date passes without payment.
On Tuesday, Hicks and Gillett attempted to remove managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre from the board and replace them with Mack Hicks and Lori Kay McCutcheon.
The club would face a nine-point penalty if it went into administration -- which would take its Premier League tally to minus figures as it has six points from seven games and is lying in the relegation zone. NESV is headed by John W Henry and Tom Werner. In 2004, two years after they took over the Red Sox, the team won their first World Series since 1918. They then secured the title again in 2007.
