Re: LFC not yet sold to NESV (but we're getting there, maybe...)
We may get new owners very soon but I don't think we will have heard the last of Mr Tom Hicks by any means.
Tom Hicks's aggression and refusal to go quietly shock 'Liverpool Three'
Martin Broughton, Christian Purslow and Ian Ayre – or the Liverpool Three, as they may soon be christened – always knew Tom Hicks would not go quietly if they decided as directors that the best, solid offers for the club were lower than the payday the Texan had set his mind on.
As his petition makes clear, even before the fevered allegations of "epic swindle" and conspiracies by the three directors and Royal Bank of Scotland, Hicks is obsessed with the valuation put on Liverpool by Forbes magazine. In their list of "Soccer Team valuations" 2010, Forbes make that value $822m (£514m), a figure, Hicks's lawyers state with his frustration evident, "greatly exceeding Liverpool FC's outstanding debt".
That is the core of all his opposition to the deal the three – the proper majority on the board, the high court decided yesterday – agreed with New England Sports Ventures. It would pay off only the £200m Hicks's and George Gillett's holding company owes RBS, the cost of buying the club in the first place, and £100m of Liverpool's other debts. Hicks simply believes it is not enough. His petition says he and Gillett, because of their "substantial efforts to ensure that Liverpool FC's long, proud and successful history on the pitch will continue", can get what Forbes reckons they should.
Whether the US finance magazine ever thought the valuations it works up to sell copies would be used quite so authoritatively in a court action in which Hicks is claiming "punitive damages that may exceed $1bn" from the Liverpool three personally, Forbes has not said.
Broughton has consistently argued, as in court yesterday, that of all interest communicated to buy Liverpool, some of which Hicks recites in his petition, only NESV and Peter Lim, the Singapore businessman, produced solid proposals and proof of funds. Some may agree Hicks has a point: Liverpool are surely worth more than £300m and NESV, led by John W Henry, has itself a steal. Broughton's response, set out in court, is that after an exhaustive worldwide search, these were the best offers, and therefore this is the club's true value.
The main reason for this lower valuation is the "acquisition debt" Hicks and Gillett borrowed from RBS to buy the club, then made it the club's responsibility to service. Hicks's petition nowhere mentions this, that he and Gillett borrowed that money, or that the club has had to pay around £40m interest a year to service it, or even that the money is still owed to RBS. "Messrs Hicks and Gillett have helped to solidify Liverpool FC's financial position," the petition says.
Some who have worked for Hicks say he always believes in his own mission, and has a warrior's belief in taking his fight to the limit. Hicks placed his own baseball team, the Texas Rangers, into administrative bankruptcy last year after his holding company, Hicks Sports Group, defaulted on loans of $525m, which, as with RBS, banks that had lent it readily before the credit crunch decided they wanted back.
So Broughton, Purslow and Ayre were ready for opposition from Hicks – who, rather than Gillett, with whom he has also periodically rowed, is making all the running in this battle. Broughton took consistent, careful legal advice from the club's solicitor, Slaughter & May, at every step, documenting the extensiveness of the sales process, and all communication with Hicks and Gillett, as directors and shareholders.
Yet even knowing Hicks would do everything he could to defend his position and seek more money, his moves have still shocked with their aggression. Rather than attend last Tuesday week's board meeting, even by conference call, and argue the club should be securing more than £300m, Hicks attempted the ploy of sacking Purslow and Ayre, and replacing them not with acknowledged expert directors suitable for Liverpool, but his son Mack and Mack's assistant.
That was when Broughton went on the attack, claiming, on advice from Slaughter & May, yesterday upheld in court, that Hicks and Gillett were committing "flagrant abuses of their undertakings".
Then in the high court, Hicks's lawyer, Paul Girolami QC, sought to argue that the "English directors" had ganged up on Hicks and Gillett, and kept them out of discussions, rejecting higher offers for Liverpool, for reasons unexplained.
After Hicks lost that case, and with the sale to NESV about to proceed, Hicks then launched this claim, which says Broughton, Purslow and Ayre did all this – schemed to secure a lower deal for Liverpool – because they were "caving to the demands of Liverpool supporters", that Broughton "had become a mere puppet of RBS" and that they all indulged in a "grand conspiracy".
Last night's injunction, which Liverpool and RBS are seeking to overturn, came as a blow but, on a moment's reflection, the further resistance from Hicks was not surprising. What jarred, though, was the violence of the language in this legal document, the descriptions – of "defendant Broughton and another unnamed co-conspirator", the claim of an "epic swindle" – by a man who seems to believe he has brought solid success to Liverpool football club.
The claim reveals the great risks Broughton, Purslow and Ayre have been taking for, whatever Hicks's petition says about their admittedly handsome bonuses, no huge advantage to themselves. He is suing them personally for "hundreds of millions of dollars in actual damages" and the billion dollar punitive damages. Their home addresses are printed in the petition, and Hicks is threatening them with this ruination, apparently seriously believing they conspired in an "epic swindle" to lose him the profit he thinks he should make on the sale.
As English football acclimatises to overseas ownership of its great clubs, which is still unique in the world game, those who run it should pause to ask a question: Can anybody quite believe that the future of Liverpool football club has been put at risk, and is being fought over, in a district court in Dallas, Texas?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/oct/14/tom-hicks-liverpool
