KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Kenny Huang ENDS interest in LFC

Sales of Man City, Chelsea and even Portsmouth were not preceded by two years of constant, drawn out bids for the clubs, nor the highly publicised appointment of an expensively paid well-known executive whose only duty was to oversee the club being sold.

People denigrating Kenny Huang need to get a grip and stop making ill-informed comments. He knew in advance that he'd be dealing with muppets, so imposed strict timescales which weren't respected. After also being required not to comment on the previous owners' incompetence he walked away. I can't blame him.


Now we are buried deep in the brown stuff, no other way to describe it.

from another site but the most truth spoken in all of this .

HUANG: ALL TALK, NO SUBSTANCE!
So Huang has walked. Picked up his ball and gone home. But why? And what does that mean for us?

SLOW PACE?: Some parties would have us believe that Huang grew "impatient" and "frustrated" with the LFC Board because things were seemingly progressing so slowly. What tosh! If Huang was really sincere about wanting to buy the club and invest in it’s future - and about having the necessary capital to do so - the speed at which the transaction was (not) progressing would not have prompted him to pull out. And certainly not now.

CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENT: Some parties would have us believe that Huang’s exit was linked to him apparently having refused to sign a confidentiality agreement. More tosh! Huang had to have signed some form of NDA as soon as he’d asked the Board for any information from them – if he indeed did at all - or had asked them to have engaged in any kind of serious discussions with him.

SO WHY PULL OUT: Probably because he realized he would not ultimately prevail, and to thus save face. Either because someone else out there has a stronger chance (we hope!) or possibly because the Board had (or were about to) see his bid for what it really is: just a bottom feeding LBO play. Note that in his press release last night Huang gave no reason as to why he is pulling out.

IS THE LFC BOARD AT FAULT? No. Did they drive him away? Probably. Why? Because they’re trying “to sort the wheat from the chaff”. They're doing their job! They're doing precisely what Moores and Parry failed to! Huang probably realized he’d been rumbled (or was about to be). And so he first bleated to the media about being frustrated by the Board’s lack of speed (who does that during an acquisition process?), which was his tee-up, and he then swung his one-wood and exited stage left.

“TAKEN SERIOUSLY”: One or two journalists are saying this development is“a huge setback for LFC” because the board had been taking Huang “very seriously”. Really? Were they? Where? When?

PROOF OF FUNDS: Some people think Huang had provided required proof of funds to the board. Don’t think so! He may well have secured expressions of interest (from third parties) for the cash required to buy the club for assumed debt (GBP300M) meaning that H&G would have made nothing on the deal. (Good!) But despite his claims to have had a "plan", there is no way he ever had the money needed to build a new stadium (GBP500) and to invest in the future of the club (GBP200).

CIC (CHINA INVESTMENT CORPORATION): Were CIC backing him? No! Or at least, not likely. If they had been, Huang would have had to have guaranteed them of absolute confidentiality during the entire process. CIC are 'grown ups' not chancers. When it was leaked out (by Huang?) that they might be involved, they denied it. So did Huang’s colleague Marc Ganis who was quoted saying CIC “were not committed in any way”. Interestingly, Ganis subsequently parted ways with Huang shortly after having made that comment.

OTHER BACKERS?: So who else was with him? Huang (or at least his people) pointed to Guang Yang, EVP of Templeton Global Equity Group. Unfortunatley Franklin Templeton also swiftly issued a statement denying any interest or involvement.

“IN THE OPEN”: Certain quarters of the press are now yelling about how they think the entire sale process should be conducted "out in the open". In public? You what? Did Abramovich blab to the press before he acquired Chelsea? Did he [oops]! Did Sheik Mansour have his PR firm issue a sequence of press releases and “50/50” statements before buying Citeh? No! If you’re a serious, grown up player, you want to do all your negotiating - and all of your due diligence etc - in private! Indeed, as soon as Huang started using the media, that was it for me. All talk, no substance! Empty vessels and all that…

DID WE DODGE A BULLET: Yes! Emphatically, yes! Huang is not a billionaire. Or even a “mogul”. Or a “tycoon”. We don’t even know if he’s a millionaire. He’s a former stockbroker who now enjoys wheeling and dealing in the sports industry. Nothing wrong with that. And I’m sure he’s a very nice guy to have a beer with. But he’s a middle man. Hardly credentials enough to be the next owner of LFC. And putting all those accusations of purported smear tactics aside, there are still some lingering issues about his honesty and credibility. (See previous blog on here.)

STALKING HORSE?: Some people are asking why Broughton didn’t “laugh off” Huang’s credibility. Probably because (1) Broughton loved the fact that some muppet was distracting attention from the grown ups quietly going about their business, and because (2) Huang was driving a sense of competition into the market. The problem with the second point though is that the grown ups knew immediately that he was full of [oops].

HAUNG’S MOTIVE: So what was Huang’s motive in all this? That's easy! Look at the colossal amount of worldwide publicity he and QSL have generated from this “bid”. They will now be much better known in the sports industry, and the private equity and investment banking circles. You can’t buy that kind of publicity! And his reputation will not have been tarnished for having seemingly failed. If asked, he can just blame the board for having been "too slow".

WILL HUANG BE BACK?: No. Not in any grown up kind of way.

ARE THERE ANY GROWN UPS INTERESTED?: Yes. But I have no intelligence that any of them will prevail.

FINAL COMMENT: Remember Broughton’s first words about this entire process: "Ignore all the rumors, ignore all the subjective journalism, and let us do our job. It wont be in the press. There will simply be an announcement."

Either that or Huang hasnt actually got a pot to p!ss in.

The comments come from Mike Jefferies

just keep believing the hype and crap from Mr Tony Evans .

He didnt want us that much if he did he would have fought

i hope that khalifa dude would come in for us lol

I thought this was a interesting article. The wage cap was a stumbling block and a stadium. We have planning permission for a stadium and the new spending structure to be introduced by Platini.

I wanted to [take over] Liverpool," said Kraft. "I met with [the then chairman] David Moores, who is a fine gentleman, and we came very close to buying it, very close. But in the end my instinct was – without a salary cap, or a stadium ... I wasn't sure how we'd get a stadium built quickly and efficiently. But the more important issue was the salary cap. If the salary cap was there, we would have done it."

Kraft has experience of building sporting arenas, having overseen construction of the 68,000-seat Gillette Stadium in New England in 2000, but hinted that he was less comfortable with the prospect of trying to make a team profitable in an environment where wages and transfer fees continue to rise unchecked in an economic downturn. He also expressed concern at the idea that a team could spend €80m (£68m) before wages on a player who could, theoretically, suffer a long-term injury in their first game.

The wage cap I think is a very important issue and I think unless this is introduced in the EPL more and more clubs will fall into debt and will be the downfall of football. It works in rugby and has refreshened the game as we do not have the same teams winning.

as the song says kenny "please dont go, please dont go, dont gggoooooo, away"