Liverpool ownership battle nears climax

The legal battle over the ownership of Liverpool could be decided Wednesday in a saga given a new twist by an increased offer for the Premier League club from a Singaporean tycoon.

In the High Court in London on Tuesday, Liverpool’s current American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett were accused by the club’s main creditor of trying to “frustrate” a sale to the owners of the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

As the courtroom battle started, Singapore’s Peter Lim said he had made a rival bid of 360 million pounds for the club.

Lim said he wanted to help Liverpool “regain its position at the pinnacle of English and European football, where it truly belongs”.

The package is 20 percent higher than the proposal of 300 million pounds made by Red Sox owners New England Sports Ventures (NESV), which was accepted by the club’s management last week.

However, it appears that Lim’s bid does not offer any more of a pay-off to Hicks and Gillett than NESV’s.

The pair stand to lose 144 million pounds between them if the 300-million-pound sale to NESV goes through.

The American owners are contesting Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton’s decision to sell to NESV, claiming that he lacked the authority to agree the sale — which Broughton denies.

In a day of courtroom battles, Richard Snowden, a lawyer representing Liverpool’s major creditor, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), accused Hicks and Gillett of trying to change the running of the club to block the sale to NESV.

He said this was in order to “frustrate the sale necessary to repay the bank 200 million pounds by this Friday”, the deadline for the repayment of the loan that the Americans took out to buy the club in 2007.

Broughton claims that when the owners decided to sell the club in April, RBS requested undertakings that only he, as independent chairman, could make changes to the club’s board.

On the night the board accepted the sale to NESV, Hicks and Gillett tried to install Hicks’ son and a business associate on the board in place of two executives who later approved the sale.

But Paul Girolami, representing Hicks and Gillett, said his clients “were not trying to throw a spanner in the works” of the proposed deal.

He argued there had been other offers for the club which potentially were better than the one approved by the board.

Judge Christopher Floyd indicated he could deliver his ruling in the case on Wednesday.

Lim’s offer values the club at 320 million pounds and he has pledged a further 40 million pounds to buy new players. NESV have not disclosed how much money they would make available to strengthen Liverpool’s squad.

“I respect and admire Liverpool Football Club, which is steeped in tradition and history,” said Lim, 57, a self-made fishmonger’s son whose fortune is estimated by US business magazine Forbes at 1.6 billion dollars.

“I am committed to rebuilding the club so that it can soon regain its position at the pinnacle of English and European football, where it truly belongs. This is why I have stepped forward with this offer,” he added in a statement.

The new offer is in cash and will remove the entire acquisition debt of 200 million pounds taken on by the existing owners.

Lim said: “My offer provides a firm financial platform from which the club can rebuild. Given the manner in which the sale process has been handled, I feel Martin and the Board owe it to me, to the club and to the supporters to consider my offer.”

As the boardroom battle has reached a peak, Liverpool have made their worst start to a season for nearly 50 years.

The team, managed by Roy Hodgson and starring Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, are languishing in the Premier League relegation zone and have been eliminated from the League Cup.