Liverpool FC sale blocked by Texan court
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The £300m sale of Liverpool FC to New England Sports Ventures’ (NESV) could be held up after the club’s owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, claimed they had placed a temporary restraining order blocking the deal.
The move came hours after the duo lost a case in the High Court in London which cleared the way for the club’s board to sell the club to Boston Red Sox owners NESV.
The co-owners want £990m in damages from the club’s major creditor Royal Bank of Scotland Group and the club’s board.
A state district judge in Dallas has issued the order, Hicks and Gillett claim in an e-mailed statement, and scheduled a hearing for 25 October.
In reply, the club’s board vowed to move as swiftly as possible to seek to have it [the restraining order] removed”.
The statement adds that the board “met and resolved” to complete the sale of the club to NESV last night (13 October) following the “successful conclusion of High Court proceedings”.
“The independent directors consider the restraining order to be unwarranted and damaging and will move as swiftly as possible to seek to have it removed,” the statement adds.
Yesterday’s High Court action was brought by RBS, which claimed that Hicks and Gillett had breached contractual undertakings when they attempted to block the sale of the club to NESV last week.
The duo tried to sack two board members, managing director Christian Purslow and commercial director Ian Ayre, and replace them with Hicks’s son Mack and vice president of Hicks Holdings, Lori McCutcheon.
YouGov Insight:
Sport
- 78% of UK sport followers say that they follow football on the television, while 1 in 4 say that they follow football ’live at the event’.
- 82% of men watch football on TV and a third go to live games. 72% of women watch football on TV but only 15% attend live.
- 35% of UK sport followers say that they watch rugby union on television, whereas only 20% say that they watch rugby league.
- Of those who watch live sport, 52% bought a snack the last time they were at an event while 43% said they bought an alcoholic drink.
- It’s a dead heat between those who prefer to watch sport from the comfort of their living room and those who like to be in the thick of the action at live events (24% each).
Click here for more information on this YouGov market report
