China is funding a bid to buy Liverpool Football Club, as Beijing seeks to extend its rapidly growing global influence into the world of British sport, reports said yesterday.
China’s overseas investment arm China Investment Corp (CIC) is providing funds for the bid fronted by businessman Kenny Huang (黃健華) to acquire the top sporting brand, Britain’s the Times and the Guardian newspapers reported.
The news is a dramatic twist in the saga of troubled Liverpool, whose US owners put the Premier League club up for sale in April, weighed down by more than £200 million (US$318 million) of debt. CIC’s emergence as a bidder for Liverpool sets up a takeover battle, with the Chinese pitted against a private equity group and a wealthy Kuwaiti family for control of the club, according to the Times.
The Chinese sovereign wealth fund’s bid values the club at between £300 million and £350 million, said the Times, citing insiders. If the takeover attempt succeeded, CIC would end up owning the majority of the club.
The fund would expect to make money by building a bigger stadium and developing the club’s Asian fan base, the Times said.
A CIC executive in Beijing, who asked not to be named, said: “I just read the report. I’m not aware of this matter.”
Speculation has been mounting about Chinese sports tycoon Huang’s interest in the club, and he was forced to issue a statement on Wednesday denying reports he had made a formal bid.
“Mr Huang would like to emphasize that he has registered interest in investing in Liverpool FC, but has made no formal bid,” said a statement from his representatives, Hill & Knowlton.
Huang, the head of Hong Kong-based investment company QSL Sports, is believed to want to secure an early agreement to give manager Roy Hodgson time to bring in reinforcements before the end of the transfer window. He is believed to have spoken to senior figures at Anfield to express his seriousness about a buy-out, in the hope that it will help persuade top stars like Fernando Torres that the club does have a better future.
On Tuesday, Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton announced that “several” potential buyers had submitted bids to buy Liverpool.
“It still remains the objective to conclude a deal before the end of the transfer window [Aug. 31],” he told the Guardian.
Liverpool is just the latest Premier League side to be targeted by a foreign country. Clubs already in foreign hands include Aston Villa, Birmingham and Manchester United. Liverpool was put on the market by US co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillet in April, and the club owes £237 million to its principal lender the Royal Bank of Scotland.
CIC was established to invest overseas some of China’s massive foreign exchange reserves — which stood at US$2.447 trillion at the end of March — partly to gain better returns.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS