Liverpool FC rejected £2bn takeover bid according to reports
A £2bn bid for Liverpool FC from a cousin of Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour has been rejected, according to reports.
It is claimed that Sheikh Khaled Bin Zayed Al Nehayan approached the Anfield club in late 2017 and early 2018 with an offer, which would also have included a Chinese investor.
The report, in the Daily Mail, said Midhat Kidwai, managing director of Bin Zayed Group, Sheikh Khaled’s collection of companies, met Liverpool chairman Tom Werner in New York.
However, a Liverpool FC source has told the BBC that the meeting “would have been largely coincidental” and “not specifically arranged”.
The source said that the absence in any discussions of the two biggest shareholders in Liverpool, John Henry and Mike Gordon, “is significant”.
Liverpool is not for sale, and there are no ongoing discussions about any sale, the source added.
They said club owner Fenway Sports Group (FSG) regularly receives “proposals of interest”, but that the Sheikh’s bid had not reached them directly.
The bid, instead, had been processed by a financial services company acting as a “filter and sounding board”.
The source said the £2bn valuation “would not be something FSG or any individual owner will have set”.
And they added: “Any discussion of figures and valuations should be seen in the context that it was at a vetting process to weigh up credibility of the proposed investor and nothing more.”
Previously, the club’s owners have said they would “under the right terms and conditions consider taking on a minority investor, if such a partnership was to further our commercial interests in specific market places, in line with the continued development and growth of the club”.
The Reds were acquired in 2010 by New England Sports Ventures, now Fenway Sports Group, for £300m.
In May this year the club was valued by business services group KPMG at £1.42bn.
Manchester City was valued at £1.94bn, Arsenal £1.89bn, Chelsea £1.58bn and Tottenham £1.16bn.
Manchester United’s valuation of £2.93bn outstripped European rivals Real Madrid (£2.6bn), Barcelona (£2.5bn) and Bayern Munich (£2.3bn).
The £790m purchase of Manchester United by Malcolm Glazer in 2005 remains the most expensive football takeover deal.
