some more on the takeovers in football - this time by an organisation with the funds to take a club from lower leagues (more than likely the championship) up!
By Roger Blitz
Published: May 15 2007 03:00 | Last updated: May 15 2007 03:00
General Electric is aiming to pull off one or two big take-over deals in the football Premiership and continental European leagues as a springboard for its new financing unit focused on the European sports market.
The US conglomerate is setting up the unit in its London office in response to the burgeoning takeover activity among UK Premier League clubs.
The group's media, communications and entertainment unit, part of its $230bn (£116bn) commercial finance division, will also look at commercial rights deals, stadium financing, and refinancing packages for clubs, and has its eye on other sports such as motor racing.
GE's sole European sports activity has been a £20m investment in the Glazer family's £790m takeover of Manchester United in 2005.
Hermes Sports Partners, GE's London-based sports unit, has brought in a financier and adviser with sports contacts across Europe.
Harry Philp, managing director of Hermes, said the Premier League and the top half of the second-ranking Football League Championship were under scrutiny. "We are looking to do big deals but, at the moment, there are not that many around," he said. "We are going to look at the major clubs in Europe and see if we can help them."
Ken Goldsbrough, European head of GE's MCE unit, said: "Ongoing takeover activity surrounding leading football clubs, including Liverpool and Arsenal, shows what an international, attractive and fast-moving industry this is."
Aston Villa, West Ham United and Liverpool ended the season with new owners, all from outside the UK, while Arsenal is mounting a defence against a possible takeover, and Manchester City has offered due diligence to rival bidders.
Manchester City yesterday sacked its manager, Stuart Pearce - a sign of a fresh start at a club whose bidders include Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed prime minister of Thailand.
GE faces competition for acquisition finance from Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan, while Rothschild and Seymour Pierce have advised on Premier League takeovers. But Mr Philp said he believed the GE unit would be the only team focused solely on the sports industry in Europe.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
3 comments:
a new dominnat logic emerges and mimesis rules :-) capital must be footloose and seek best opportunities - if football offers extraordinary cash for doing very little then capital will seek to appropriate the rewards
Why is Simon Kuper (in the other article) at all surprised? protest in capitalism is via non consumption not direct political action - the question becomes one of choice- no one has a basic need to watch sport and pay excessively for it, people choose to do it - otherforms of watching are available. If support dwindles, and sport becomes less of a pull in the target market in the consumption of media (after all, the Sky etc money isport capturing an externality). If it doesn't, people will pay the market price - no-one gets hurt and the money cannot be redirected to cure malaria- in a capitalist society money generates money or is wasted. One assumes master Kuper would not want his freedom impinged by being told it would be better for society that reserach into something as frivolous as sport was not worth subsidising and he should devote his labour to street refuse collection as this was more useful?
I think Kuper is a traditioanloist who views sport through rose tinted glasses, the problem is I belive this is the lay-persons opinion, sport is very easy to debate - you dont need to know much about it to feel you cn weigh in - politics on the other hand...
sport is easily appropriated as its problems and oportunities seem bounded - whereas politics is complicated messy full of unintended consequences, powerful stakeholders and vested interests, and impacted by global events econoically and in the realms of security ('Isalamic' terrorism is the obvious example of this, and how this might impact policing, ID cards, immigration policy, housing policies ,toeration and free speech, cultural initiatives etc). Sport does feel less complex, and people like Kuper do tend to reinforce this anti-intellectualism by suggesting sport belongs somehow to the 'people'. Sport operates on many levels from entertaib=nment to big business via cultural and social identity, mythologies and (meta)narratives of self contstruction - but at the end of the day it tends to matter less (and therefore does fall into the consumption good class of things, even when apparent positive externalities are potentially available - health, well being, socila integration and inclusiveness etc)Curioulsy sport works best with politics when it is withheld - boycotts in sport do seem to have some effect
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