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KENNY HUANG TO SWEETEN THE LIVERPOOL DEAL

THE battle for the hearts and minds of Liverpool supporters has begun in earnest after the Chinese investors seeking to buy the club outlined a series of pledges aimed at underpinning a long-term Anfield revival.

The charm offensive came as Kenny Huang and his backers drew up plans to submit a bid of about £400 million to speed up the sale process and offer owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks the chance to save face.

Huang, chairman of QSL Sports Limited, has outlined ambitious proposals through an intermediary to run Liverpool debt free, expand the club’s fan base and commercial activities in Asia and invest heavily in manager Roy Hodgson’s squad – the only high-profile arrivals this summer, Milan Jovanovic and Joe Cole, having joined the club on free transfers.

There is also a promise to kick-start the much-delayed plans for a move to nearby Stanley Park.

The plans will only come to fruition if Huang’s consortium take control of Liverpool and they also insisted yesterday they are not interested in lining the pockets of Hicks and Gillett.

But, after previously pitching an opening gambit of about £350m, which would only cover the club’s debts, it is understood they are ready to up the ante.

The interest of Huang is understood to have won support from Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton, managing director Christian Purslow and director Ian Ayre. They hold the majority on the five-man Liverpool board that was created in March and which saw management control pass from Gillett and Hicks.

In effect, that means the Americans can be out-voted on what happens to the club they still own, although in that event it is possible they would consider a legal challenge which would further drag out the ownership saga.

That is why Huang’s consortium are ready to up their formal proposal to about £400m and offer Gillett and Hicks a small profit on their troubled three-year tenure.

It would still be some way short of the £500m Dubai International Capital offered in March 2008 and nowhere near the huge sum Hicks has previously spoken about when valuing Liverpool at between £600-£800m.

Marc Ganis, whose Chicago-based company Sportscorp Ltd has helped form the Chinese investment group, said: “If anybody wants to [pay that figure], good luck.

“We know what we would be prepared to do. If somebody else wants to look at it in a different way, it’s their money. That would be their business, not ours.

“What is not one of our goals is the enrichment of the existing owners. If we submit a proposal and it is accepted, it would be focused on the future and not the past.”

Liverpool want all interested parties to submit legally binding proposals, containing proof of funding, in an effort to accelerate the sale.

That will put pressure on Syrian businessman Yahya Kirdi – whose son has been training at Liverpool’s academy – to reveal where his money is coming from and make good claims he is close to a deal having spoken directly with Gillett and Hicks.

Huang has contacted Liverpool officials and the Premier League, which must be notified of any change of ownership 10 days before it happens.

“We haven’t submitted a formal proposal but we submitted the broad parameters of what a proposal would look like to see if it would be welcomed, and it was,” said Ganis.

Details of who is backing the Chinese bid have, however, emerged.

QSL is headed by Huang and Guang Yang, executive vice-president of Franklin Templeton Investments and chief investment officer of the China Life/Franklin Templeton Fund. They would be the only owners involved in the management of the Liverpool.

Other investors – potentially including the China Investment Corporation – would be passive, and each would own no more than 20 per cent.

Liverpool, who have been drawn against Turkey’s Trabzonspor in the Europa League play-off, are ready to offer Jamie Carragher a contract for life.

Carragher has less than a year remaining on his deal, but Hodgson, who has failed to persuade old boy Sami Hyypia to leave Bayer Leverkusen and join his coaching staff, will make extending that a priority.

good read that cody where did u find that?

No Money from CIC, its the indians for me...

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/footb...ce-2045751.html


All the hysteria over the last week or so regarding the takeover has maybe clouded some of our judgements.

Before the asia connection came about, we were all waxing lyrical about the Indian billionaire buying the reds, when kenny surfaced we all forgot about the richest man in india and declared that china was the only one who could bring glory back to the club.

After reading the link above, i hope you, like me are starting to wish the board accept the bid from the indian.

Let me just tell you the jist of the link...

Huang will bid upto £400m for the club
Will release some funds for players ( No amount specified )
Cannot give a date on when the new stadium would be built ( Long term project )
Series of investors not 1 or even 5 owners

Read the article for the resst of the information, but as for me I would like 1 owner who's own money will be going into the club.

Remember what dunk said about bidders who make themselves public, that things wernt going their way.

I would settle for the £10 - £20 billion that the indian has, rather than the £313billion Huang doenst have.

Thoughts

Follow this link woodyed.

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/191744/Kenny-Huang-to-sweeten-the-Liverpool-deal-/

You've just posted the negative points. Read it properly and I think it is very positive. What you have done is what we have been critising the journo's for.

I personaly dont want Arabs,Chinese, Americans or anyone like that taking over the club myself because I know they are all in it for business reasons not for the love of the club. By the way has anyone got an answer for my question about where would football be without local identity and where would Clubs like Crewe, Preston's and Watford's of this world be if all supporters supported a Club just because it was famous and successful like most Liverpool and United out of town and foreign fans have done.

What im saying iss, since the news about the chinese bid surfaced, all fans ( apart from red4life ) have been willing to sell their grannies for a bit of eastern promise. But as it turns out, the shinyness of the first glance of the bid isnt as shiny as first thought.

I would prefer it if our new owner was the person who held the the money in their own name rather than some front man scraping together money from tom dick and sim san hai.

As for posting negative points, yes i agree, but almost 50 pages of hope and praise for huang, im sure people wont mind seeing a different side of what they thought they knew.

red4life, the roots of the club are always going to be local. But it is diluted. Remember that even some of us OOTs are from the city. I'm from Norris Green but live on the south coast. I've earned my stripes over many years.

Smaller clubs don't have the gravitas to pull in thousands of non-locals but there'll be some, and possibly welcomed. The bigger more successful, the more heritage the club has the more people will gravitate to it. It's a fact.

The club is 'branded' and 'marketered' to attract more folk and everywhere to spread the message and the cash-generating net. Like it or not it's the business these guys are in. To have it only local would be great in terms of the depth of scouse flavour but where do you stop; only local players, only local owners? There's a limited pool of billionaires on merseyside if you want to compete the way the trend is. If you don't want that then do a Barcelona; local talent (mostly) taught from a very young age, steeped in the traditions of the club. Sounds great but it'll take 20 years to put in place and the club's financial structure would have to be resolved first - ownership in trust, held by the one constant - Fans.

Ken Bates has hit out at Liverpool owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks, branding the pair as ´jokers´.

The foul-mouthed Leeds United chairman, 82, took control at Elland Road in 2005, just two years after selling his controlling stake in Chelsea to Roman Abramovich for a £17million profit, claims that the American duo´s plans to take control at Anfield were ill-conceived.

Liverpool look set to welcome another set of overseas owners in the coming weeks, with Chinese businessman Kenny Huang favourite to succeed Gillett and Hicks, and Bates is concerned that the foreign dominance of English clubs is destroying the game.

He said: "Half of the foreign owners don´t know what they´re doing. Half of them don´t have a clue. You can´t automatically buy success, not always. You need more than money to be successful.

"Look at those two jokers at Liverpool - Tom Hicks and George Gillett. They meet in some Texan bar and decide they are going to be bestest friends and run a football club together. Do me a favour. That was always a disaster.

"Most of the clubs who are in the s*** are, or were recently, under foreign ownership. Look at them: Hull City, Derby County, West Ham, Notts County, Portsmouth and Cardiff City.

"The trouble is people come into the game and think they can make a fast buck. You can´t. You have to build something. You have to do more than just buy players.

"I´ve been there, done it and sold the T-shirt to someone. There isn´t a trick I haven´t seen. My policy is quite simple. Apply basic business principles to running a football club - but so many of them don´t.

"What happened at Portsmouth was another horrible joke. But I´ve lost count of the number of people I´ve met who say they represent the brother or a cousin of some sheik or a sultan who plans to bring me untold millions."