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MANCHESTER. — After missing out on Chelsea last year, British businessman Martin Broughton knows how potential buyers will be feeling ahead of today’s deadline to submit bids for Manchester United.
The late nights spent crunching the numbers. Checking and double-checking that financial backers will make good on their promises.
Then that final bid emailed to the New York office of merchant bank Raine Group for approval.
“Just before you put in the formal bid you go through all of the debate,” Broughton, who has no intention of making a bid for United, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “How much leeway do we leave ourselves? We need to be on the shortlist. At the same time, we don’t want to be overpaying.”
Today has been described as a soft deadline for initial offers before the process of determining the next owner of United gathers pace. Broughton, a 75-year-old businessman who is the former chairman of British Airways and English soccer club Liverpool, went through all of that last year when heading a consortium that tried to buy Chelsea, with Raine also handling that sale. He made it to the final three, but eventually lost to Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, who paid US$3 billion for the London club — a record for a football team.
United is estimated to command as much as double that figure after the American-owning Glazer family announced their willingness to sell last November.
So far Jim Ratcliffe, the British billionaire owner of petrochemicals giant INEOS, is the only confirmed bidder. But he is expected to face a challenge from Qatar, while other interested parties could become clearer after Friday. “I don’t know how many bids there were for Chelsea, but there were at least half a dozen serious bids and that leaves four or five frustrated people,” Broughton said. — AP
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