The English club is sold by its American owners, the Glazer family. According to the British press, the operation could become the biggest sale of a sports club in the world, for nearly 6 billion euros.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
Have Manchester United Red Devils have found a buyer? A consortium led by Sheikh Jassem Ben Hamad Al Thani, President of Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), announced, Friday, February 17, having filed an offer to get your hands on the English football club.
“The sheikh Jassem ben Hamad al Thani confirms having filed an offer for [the takeover at] 100 % of the Manchester United Football Club”, explains the press release, which gives no details on the amount offered for the Red Devils. The English club was sold at the end of November by its American owners, the American family Glazer.
“The offer aims to make the club find its gate spent as of course as well as outside the field and -above all -it aims to put the supporters back in the heart of the Manchester United Football Club”, specifies the communicated. If the offer goes to its end, the club will be freed from its debts, which currently amount to 580 million euros, and its promoters undertake to “invest in football teams, the training center, The stadium and the infrastructure in the broad sense, “he explains again.
The petrochemical group Ineos also interested 2>
The Qib is one of the largest banks in Qatar. Its majority shareholder is the Qatar Investment Sovereign Fund Authority, owner of Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), which controls Paris Saint-Germain. One of the challenges for them will be precisely to prove that the two clubs are not controlled by the same entity, which would prevent them from competing simultaneously European competitions, according to UEFA rules.
Son of a former Qatar Prime Minister, Sheikh Jassem Ben Hamad Al Thani, 42, is presented as a supporter since the childhood of Manchester United. However, there should be other offers for the club, while the Glazer hoped for firm offers for this Friday and would like to conclude the sale by the end of April.
The English newspaper The Telegraph said that another declared fan of the Red Devils, the British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, owner of the Ineos petrochemical group, already owners of Clubs of Nice, in France, and Lausanne, in Switzerland, had also made a firm offer, a month after having made its interest known. If no detail has filtered there either, Ratcliffe, “born in the city, wants to put Manchester back in the heart of Manchester United”, explained a source close to Ineos, cited in the article.
The Saudi track
The sale of the club to the twenty titles of champion of England was entrusted to the American Business Bank Raine, already at work for the sale of Chelsea, last year.
The contenders were invited to make themselves known before Friday but, Manchester United being listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the club and its representatives will however be legally obliged to study any possible offer afterwards. Offers from the United States are not to be excluded for what is considered one of the best known football clubs in the world.
But on Friday, it was above all the Saudi track, already mentioned by the English newspaper The Telegraph, which was talking. “Several private groups from Ryad” have thus been “formally informed” about the terms of a recovery, even if the Telegraph recognized that it was not acquired that an offer was formulated. In this case, in this case, it should also be proven to the Premier League as Manchester United and Newcastle, already recently passed under Saudi pavilion, have many separate owners.
With a stock market enhancement of more than four billion euros, everything suggests that a total sale of Manchester United would break the record for the biggest sale of a sports club.
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His Chelsea rival was sold in May for 4.8 billion euros to American investors, but the amount included two billion euros in investment promises, while the team of American football for Denver Broncos (NFL) changed hands for 4.4 billion euros in June.