Liverpool’s new owners secured the club for a cash payment of less than £218m, recently filed company documents reveal.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sport/?p=100014576&preview=trueThe precise figure that principal owner John W Henry, club chairman Tom Werner and their New England Sports Ventures group paid for the equity in the club is contained in a slew of Companies House filings made in the two months since the Boston Red Sox owners took control at Anfield.
NESV won control of the club after former chairman Martin Broughton successfully forced through the sale against the wishes of former owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett.
According to the filings NESV paid £217,778,550 for the equity in the club, effectively the amount Hicks and Gillett owed to principal lender Royal Bank of Scotland.
They also assumed responsibility for debts to RBS of around £83m, taking the transaction value to a round £300m.
The loans, secured against Anfield and the club’s Melwood training ground, are in two parts, one relating to the new stadium project and the other a rolling credit facility.
The company filings and a posting on the club’s website also reveal, somewhat surprisingly that, like their predecessors, Henry and Werner have an equal say in decision making at Anfield, sharing 50% of the voting rights in the company.
The statement on the club website reads: “John Henry and Tom Werner are the ultimate owners of The Liverpool Football Club and Athletic Grounds Limited (the Club), each owning 50% of the voting rights in the Club.”
The revelation that the new owners have, like Hicks and Gillett, an equal share in decision-making has prompted fears that any dispute could destabilise the club. Hicks and Gillett each owned 50% of Liverpool’s equity, meaning their disputes ended in debilitating deadlock until the intervention of RBS and Broughton.
A spokesman for the club told the Daily Telegraph that the owners believe there will be no repeat of that situation despite the 50-50 split of voting rights.
He said the longstanding working relationship between Henry and Werner, and Henry’s “prevailing economic interest” in the club effectively gives him the casting vote, meant there would be no repeat of the Hicks and Gillett situation.
“John W Henry and Tom Werner are close friends and confer repeatedly on all issues relating to Liverpool Football Club,” the spokesman said. “They have worked together for 10 years at the Boston Red Sox without disagreement, and will continue to work together going forward.
“Were there to be any dispute principal owner John Henry has the prevailing economic interest and would have the means to resolve any issue.”
The company filings reveal that NESV’s ownership of Liverpool is held via a new UK-registered holding company, UK Sports Ventures Holding Company Limited (KSV), a subsidiary of NESV.
UKSV has just two directors, Edward Weiss, general counsel for NESV and the Red Sox, and David Ginsberg, an investment banker and colleague of Henry’s who is also on the football club board, and is vice-chairman of NESV and the Red Sox.
Beneath UKSV are two companies, Anfield Arena Limited, established by Hicks and Gillett which appears to be the vehicle for the stadium development, and Liverpool Football Club and Athletics Grounds Limited (LFCAG), the football club business.
Henry and Werner are both on the LFCAG board, and are joined by three long-standing American colleagues, Ginsberg, Michael Gordon and Jeffrey Vinik. According to the club none of them owns more than 10% of the equity.
According to the Red Sox media guide Ginsberg, who currently runs Raptor Group Holdings, an investment group he founded, began his financial career at NatWest USA. He rose to head their mergers and acquisitions department.
He worked in London as a fund manager for Global Asset Management before joining John W Henry & Company as a special advisor to Henry. He played a key role negotiating NESV’s takeover of the Red Sox.
Vinik, an MBA graduate of Harvard Business School, made his name and fortune as a fund manager, and earlier this year he bought the Tampa Bay Lightning NHL ice hockey franchise.
He worked for Magellan for four years before starting his own fund Vinik Asset Management. His Wikipedia entry states that he made a 93% return for his investors in the first year and 50% in each of the next three. In 2000 he closed the find and concentrated on his own investments.
There is little biographical information available on Gordon, but he is understood to be a former colleague of Werner, one of the most successful comedy producers in American television with credits including Soap.
