Newcastle Set Deadline For Takeover
Newcastle United expect to complete a takeover deal for the newly relegated Coca-Cola Championship club by the end of June with the asking price believed to be set at around £100m.
Keith Harris, chairman of investment bank Seymour Pierce and the man responsible for negotiating a deal on behalf of beleaguered owner Mike Ashley, has revealed there were ‘two or three’ rival parties vying to buy the club.
Ashley, who bought the club in 2007, first put the club up for sale in September 2008, having invested £250m.
The owner briefly took the club off the market in December after struggling to sell, but Harris claims the club is now much more attractive to prospective buyers – at least some of whom he suggested were based in the UK.
Said Harris: ‘There is real and decent interest, and this is not necessarily from far-flung parts of the globe. Newcastle had an awful season and got relegated so that has an implication for the value of an asset of a decrease to make it more attractive.
‘It is a huge club. In attendance terms, last year it exceeded Liverpool with an average attendance over 48,000.
‘If you walk around the infrastructure of the ground, the training ground, the academy, what you realise is for somebody willing to take a view over two or three years this is a club that belongs in the top seven of the Premier League. It’s very attractive.’
Media reports over the weekend suggested that former chairman Freddy Shepherd was looking to repurchase the club but Harris stated that he would only find out the identity of the bidders next week.
