Very similar to what was reported about United by The Athletic on 14 December (they wrote that while there has been interest in United, "when it comes to offers to Raine, serious talks are yet to materialize").
https://theathletic.com/3991146/2022/12/15/united-sale-manchester-glazers/
1. Yeah, just shooting from the hip, I would definitely guess on that we are at a point were investors have been told to submit indicative bids and description for their plans by a specific time, which may or may not have passed. Further, I would guess the interest submitted at this point will include a fairly low valuation. No purpose in bidding against yourself, and the stage following the submission of indicative bids will always include hands-on negotiations and possibilities for the short listed bidders to match each others bids. A scenario in which Raine Group get very few or none indicative bids does not exist. Any mid-sized family office or similar investment vehicle that manage to get its name mentioned in connection with buying Man Utd will get free publicity that many would value highly. Its 100% that the Raine Group will gets many many bids from London entities, private entities in the Middle East, China and Asia in general, and surely even from the USA. The only way to avoid bids like this from parties that might not even be able to finance them is to ask for them to submit a Certainty of Funds undertaking from the banks that are backing them (the money that bank undertakes to loan to the bidder will be made available by the bank -- no matter what, there are no conditions whatsoever basically). I cannot imagine that you can do that with a 5-8bn transaction.
So there will be certainly be work ongoing containing the evaluation of all indicative bids/interest being filed with the Raine Group.
The point the Raine Group needs to get to is where they obtain an indicative bid that is sufficiently legit so that they can take it to like Ratcliffe and say look, your first bid is 4.9bn, but here we got an offer of 5.75bn from the Dubai Investment Fund -- or someone else with impeccable credit worthiness in plain English -- we will go with them unless you up your bid. Before someone that surely is legit starts to close in on the valuations required by the Glazers, there is always a risk that you end up with a bit of a waiting game. The Glazers will of course come out setting a high threshold for what level of bids they will accept. Lets say its 6.5bn. Before anyone know that they have to pay more or the club will be sold to someone else, its hard to see why they would want to deliver a bid over say 5bn.
Usually a negotiation need a "deadline" to get going. The problem with a deadline is that its very hard to give it legitimacy. If the Raine Group set 10 January as a deadline to submit bids north of 6bn, and say only one US Consortium does it, couldn't QSI or Amazon come in a week later offering 7.5bn? Of course they could. You don't toss away a billion and a half over a question of principle. If they got 10 bids north of 6bn, its another story. Is the Q1 a real deadline? Nah. Its not. Definitely possible if you have a high number of bidders willing to meet the Glazers ask, but you couldn't get someone out of their comfort zone bidding against themselves because a date during Q1 comes closer. How about before season end? Before last July? When is the real "deadline"? Is there even a real deadline before the 23/24 season? Yeah, I would say that there is at least a "soft" deadline at a point in time were if you pass it, the new owner cannot take control before next season starts. Which exact date in the calendar that is, is very hard to speculate on since it depends on the deal structure chosen (full take over, only buying the Glazers shares etc) and Cayman Island law. I would guess that you need a buyer in principle in place before the end of season, but that speculation comes with a +/- 2-3 month caveat at least.
In summary,
(a) for various reasons, I don't think we have a buyer in place, as was discussed widely early in the process. Just think we would have seen much more distinct information about various deadlines etc.
(b) When is it time to start to legitimately fear that someone won't be done? I would say end up season.
2. The market is slowly -- and in no way surely -- starting to pick up speed. In the Western world, Q3 was dead. No transactions were made. Financing could not be obtained. In Q4, people that needed to get stuff done got stuff done. In comparison to every day life, the company version of a divorced couple that was looking to sell their house to buy an apartment each manage to do so. Right here right now, the market is asking it self -- will things pick up after the Q1? Will we get signs that the insanely high inflation we are seeing now are coming down fast? Will the damage done to date result in a mild recession during the spring, or will things get chaotic as car industries start to lay of employers since nobody can afford to buy cars with a loan with 7 percent interest, banks get problem when people can't pay their mortage -- and so forth? Will the war in Ukraine spread or take a turn for the worse? Remember -- the expectations -- for the answer to these questions are definitely positive. The market expects the inflation to come down fast, and there is significant hopes that the outcome could be more positive than expected. The recession is only expected to be mild. The Ukraine war is seen as being as bad as it gets, what could get worse? Nobody really expects it Nato to dragged into it, nuclear devices to be used etc etc etc.
So in say a month, things could start to pick up pretty fast. And that could definitely speed up our process. If the Glazers started the process a year ago, I think it would have been done by now to be honest. You would have had SPAC's and crypto currency exchanges and what not getting legit backing from the market resulting in them presenting legit bids, which in its turn would push the names discussed now to act (I don't think we would have gotten a different buyer, but you never know).
3. All in all, I am definitely hopeful something can get done in Q1, but I wouldn't start to get worried before we get into May-June (or who am I kidding , I am worried right now, but I wouldn't think there is "objective" reasons to be worried before May/June).
