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Posts Tagged ‘chinese’

• Head of corporate affairs cites example of Park Ji-sung
• Says: ‘Liverpool more aware of commercial opportunity’

Gavin Law, the group head of corporate affairs for Liverpool’s shirt sponsor, Standard Chartered, has said the bank would like the club to sign Asian players, in order to exploit one of the bank’s largest markets.

“We would love the club to have players of nationalities from the markets in which we operate,” Mr Law said. “They are not going to get them from all 75 but if they could sign some – if they could get a Korean, Indian, Chinese player – look what Park [Ji-sung] has done for [Manchester] United in terms of coverage in Korea.

“Liverpool are more aware than most other clubs we’ve spoken to of the commercial opportunity for them. If they can sell a million shirts with another Mr Park on the back, why wouldn’t you?”

Standard’s £20m-a-season sponsorship deal with Liverpool is the most lucrative in football history.

Law’s comments were reported in The Independent, which also said that Standard’s chief executive, Peter Sands, had sought undertakings about the club’s code of conduct for players. Law said that the bank were not concerned about the striker Andy Carroll, who was this week told to “drink less” by the England manager, Fabio Capello.

Law said: “They [the players] are young men and they play hard and party hard. Reputationally, what is important to us is that the club has the right set of responsibilities and guidelines for their players. We will never stop some players going to excess [but] one of the issues we had to consider [was] what would we do if certain things happened at the football club.”

LiverpoolBusinessguardian.co.uk

Supporters and players are desperate to be able to focus all their attention on events on the pitch, says the former Liverpool player

Following the defeat to Blackpool and the ever-increasing sense of negativity surrounding Liverpool, news of this takeover deal has come at an opportune time for the club. But there is still a long way to go and to a large extent it feels like we’ve heard this all before, most recently from Kenny Huang. The supporters were led to believe then that the club was on the verge of being sold to the Chinese government, but ultimately nothing happened.

However, any movement in regards to a takeover is good news because the situation with Tom Hicks and George Gillett simply cannot go on. Their time at Liverpool has been an extremely unsettling and troubling one and has got even worse in the last 24 hours with them now trying to get rid of people on the board. It is reminiscent of the wranglings they had with Rafael Benítez which, it can be argued, was when the mess at Liverpool first started.

There is some concern among the supporters that this takeover is also American-led, but as long as they meet the criteria for a successful sale and fulfil the promises they make upon arriving at Anfield then that is what really matters, not their nationality. That is what most fans want; for the club to be under stable ownership and for those owners to do what they say they will. Hicks and Gillett said they would build a new stadium but failed repeatedly to do so. That is simply unforgivable.

John W Henry and the New England Sports Ventures group have not commented on what funds would be available to Roy Hodgson to invest in the playing squad when the transfer window reopens in January, or whether the 60,000-plus seat stadium they are committed to will be a new project or a renovation of Anfield. One investment is not more important than the other but both must be delivered.

As each day goes by Liverpool fall further and further behind the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City, and to have any chance of catching them up we need to strengthen the team as soon as possible. That can be done only with more money; which comes through increased investment and more gate receipts from having a larger stadium. They go hand in hand.

A takeover really should have been completed over the summer but in some ways the timing of this deal is perfect. The club is at a real low after what has been a terrible start to the season and desperately needs something to feel positive about. Hopefully negotiations will develop further in the next week and the team can then go into the Merseyside derby on a high and confident about the future.

The poor performances of the players cannot solely be put down to what has been going on with the current owners but there is no doubt that they have been affected by it. When something like this is happening at a club it creates a general bad feeling which spreads to everyone involved. You just have to look at the demeanour of the team over the past year or so to recognise that; most of the time they do not even look like they want to be on the pitch, let alone fight for a victory.

The players will have felt the effects of the off-field struggle every day. When they are out shopping, for instance, fans will walk up to them and ask if there is any news on a takeover, and after a while that can become a mental burden.

What they and all Liverpool supporters want is for the focus of the club to return to what is happening for the pitch. That has taken a back seat under Hicks and Gillett – let us hope things are now about to change for the better.

Jimmy Case was a Liverpool player from 1973 to 1981, winning four league titles and three European Cups with the club

Liverpoolguardian.co.uk

• John W Henry behind one of two outline offers made to club
• Chinese group also interested but owners reject both

The owner of the Boston Red Sox Major League Baseball team, John W Henry, has posted an outline offer to buy Liverpool Football Club, according to sources close to the discussions. Liverpool’s chairman, Martin Broughton, presented Henry’s bid, along with one from Asian business interests, understood to be Chinese, at a board meeting today.

Both bids were described as “credible” by reliable sources today and Broughton, Liverpool’s managing director, Christian Purslow, and Ian Ayre, the club’s commercial director, were understood to favour entering serious discussions. However, Tom Hicks and George Gillett, the American owners of Liverpool, which owes £237m to Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia, were said to have rejected the offers in principle because they do not provide enough money for their shares.

One informed source described Henry as “extremely interested” in buying Liverpool, saying he has the means and expertise required, as evidenced by the Red Sox’s iconic stadium, Fenway Park. Liverpool supporters will be naturally suspicious of any bid coming from the US after the bitter experience with Hicks and Gillett and will want assurances that the finance is real, not borrowed. Hicks and Gillett engineered a “leveraged buy-out” of Liverpool in February 2007, with £185m entirely borrowed from RBS, then made the capital and interest the club’s responsibility to repay.

The outlines of the bids are understood to be broadly the ones which have been considered as the only credible solution for the club – repaying the banks but giving little profit to Hicks and Gillett. The banks, both of which collapsed in the economic crisis, – RBS is now 84% owned by the British taxpayer – want their loans back on 15 October but there is no apparent prospect of either of the owners being able to repay them. Despite that, Hicks and Gillett are known to have held out for a handsome profit on their shares. Neither could be reached for comment tonight.This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the actual copy has not yet been received. This is appropriate dummy text that is being employed in order to ascertain an approximate length because the copy has not yet been received. 100

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LiverpoolMLBBusinessDavid Connguardian.co.uk