Henry vows to win fight for Liverpool´s future

Prospective Liverpool owner John W Henry has vowed to fight Tom Hicks’ “last desperate attempt” to retain control of the Premier League club as the bitter takeover battle entered its final stages.

Henry said his New England Sports Ventures (NESV) company has a binding agreement to buy Liverpool after the High Court ruled in his favour twice this week following a legal battle with the club’s current American owners.

Hicks co-owns Liverpool with hedge fund Mill Financial, which recently bought George Gillett’s 50 percent stake in the club, and he has been determined not to let Reds chairman Martin Broughton broker a deal to sell to Henry because he believes the price is too low.

His latest plan is to persuade Mill Financial to help him pay Liverpool’s 280 million pounds debt to the Royal Bank of Scotland by Friday’s deadline and thwart the takeover by NESV.

Sources close to the deal confirmed that Hicks has removed the restraining order imposed by a Texas court preventing the club’s sale. A reason for doing so would be to allow the Texan to sell his stake to Mill Financial.

However, NESV believe any such attempt by Hicks would have to be ratified by the Liverpool board and they would be prepared to return to the High Court to have their binding agreement upheld.

Henry said on his Twitter account on Friday: “We have a binding contract. Will fight Mill Hicks Gillett attempt to keep club today. Their last desperate attempt to entrench their regime.”

NESV are poised to send the money for their takeover and believe they have the law on their side – their lawyers won a second successive significant victory on Thursday when a judge granted anti-suit injunctions to nullify decisions taken in the court in Dallas late on Wednesday.

The judge said his mandatory orders were not aimed at the Texas court but Hicks and Gillett to stop them taking further action there.

He was scathing in his remarks about the American co-owners’ conduct, which he described as “unconscionable”.