To be honest, I started to suspect something was amiss when I started hearing Jassim had included how much he was going to invest in the club as part of the bid.
To me it suggested his bid wasn’t that attractive. Now not surprised to hear it wasn’t even up to £5bn. The reason why the £1.75bn was announced as part of Chelsea’s bid was because Abromivich wanted to be sure whoever was buying Chelsea could invest into the club. He cared.
Glazers don’t give feck. I can’t stress how malevolent they are as owners.
I am not keen on being a sport washing entity forQatar but a couple of things worry me about Ratcliffe.
- The man himself. This is a guy that supported Brexit but lives in Monaco. This is a man that promised he would invest heavily in a post brexit Britain but went back on his word. This is a man who has a history of unethical business practices. He simply cannot be trusted. He has proven his words mean feck all.
- The second is the nature of the deal. With Glazers has minority shareholders, Ratcliffe has no incentive to invest heavily in CapEx. Why should he use his capital to grow a business and potentially increase the price he would later have to buyout the Glazers for? Look at Arsenal for reference.
- The third is the debt. I have noticed some people are confused on this aspect of Ratcliffe’s bid. Ratcliffe has promised that the club will not face any additional debt burden. Of course, EPL rules now prevent leveraged buyouts. What Ratcliffe is doing is taking on additional debt in the name of IENOS. What I refuse to believe is that this indirect debt won’t have any influence on Manchester United’s cash flows. I had a look at IENOS capital structure and saw they are already highly leveraged. There is no way in my mind they won’t dip into the clubs cashflow at some point in the future to support the additional debt burden. The last part is they have said nothing about the current debt the club holds. To me, that already means they have no intention of absorbing it anytime soon.
- My fourth concern is the much needed capital injection. Where is that money coming from? Are IENOS going to borrow again?