PAUL ELLIS
China's Communist government and a Montreal-based former Syrian soccer player with wealthy Middle Eastern backers may be competing for the same prize: ownership of England's troubled, and debt-laden, Liverpool soccer team.
Yahya Kirdi, an unknown in Montreal business circles who lives in the suburb of Laval, issued a statement saying he and a group of wealthy Middle Eastern and Canadian investors were in the "final stage of negotiation" to buy Liverpool from businessmen Thomas Hicks and George Gillett, the former proprietor of the Montreal Canadiens.
But The Times of London reported that a rival bid by Hong Kong-based sports tycoon Kenny Huang was being backed by the Chinese government itself, through its multi-billion-dollar China Investment Corporation - normally a buyer of natural resources, not sports teams.
The Times said insiders believed the sovereign wealth fund would end up the club's majority owner, with the price ranging between £300-million and £350-million. England's Premier League would have to approve the deal.
The club's unpopular owners bought Liverpool in 2007, but with a parent company saddled with hundreds of millions of pounds of debt, they officially put it up for sale earlier this year.
Citing an anonymous source, the Associated Press reported that Mr. Huang, who owns a minority stake in the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team, intended to buy the £237-million debt Liverpool owes to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, in order to control the club.
Mr. Huang confirmed that he was interested in the team but said he had not submitted a formal bid, adding that there "has been much speculation and commentary from a wide array of people, many of whom have little knowledge of the facts."
The sale has indeed been the subject of intense speculation for months in the British press. And Mr. Kirdi, whose bid first surfaced earlier this year, has been dismissed as a serious contender. Naysayers in the British press speculated his bid was meant only to drive up the price of the team, or to buy time with Liverpool's lenders.
A source familiar with the talks told The Globe and Mail that Mr. Kirdi's backers were indeed serious: "He has a number of very wealthy folk, who he works with. Anyone who looks at him and says he doesn't have the money is making a mistake, because he represents a number of people who have tremendous wealth."
Mr. Kirdi did not respond to a request for comment from The Globe. But he told The Canadian Press that his plans for Liverpool, in addition to paying off the team's massive bank debts and building a new stadium, include a five-star hotel, a shopping centre and a solar-energy scheme.
"I want to build Liverpool," said Mr. Kirdi, who came to Canada eight years ago.
His statement issued Wednesday says the two sides have agreed "on all major terms including the purchase" and that Mr. Kirdi is a "former Syrian National Football Team player who oversees investments in Europe and North America on behalf of his investor group."
The Canadian Press reported that Mr. Kirdi played for club sides in Syria and the country's national youth team in the 1980s.
His bid was brokered by a small firm with offices in Markham, Ont., and Montreal called GameDay Leadership Management Consultants Inc.
The company's president, Dan Diamond, acknowledged that his company, which runs programs for athletes and coaches to train business executives, has never been involved in a deal as big as buying an English Premier League team.
The release of a statement Wednesday about the talks was meant to counter reports dismissing Mr. Kirdi's bid in recent stories about Mr. Huang, he said.
"It felt that the PR strategy of that story was to denigrate our bid," said Mr. Diamond, whose nine-month-old German Shepherd is named Liverpool.
Mr. Diamond and his partners in GameDay knew Mr. Gillett and Mr. Hicks through their ownership of National Hockey League teams. And they met Mr. Kirdi last summer, when GameDay helped to promote a friendly between the national soccer teams of Syria and Haiti in Montreal.
He said Mr. Kirdi is responsible for finding "investment opportunities" for wealthy Middle Eastern investors, whom he said he could not name. Last October, knowing Liverpool was looking for potential buyers, GameDay introduced the two sides.
Mr. Diamond, who also would not name the Canadian investors involved, said he hoped the deal could be done by Aug. 15, when Liverpool plays its first home game of the new season.
One source familiar with previous attempts to sell the team said bidders often evaporate as the deal deadline nears.
He said selling Liverpool has been difficult because there are a lot of potential bidders seduced by the idea of owning a Premiership team.
But the interest tends to fall away quickly when talks get heated and the details of owning a major sports franchise turn out to be complicated: "This asset is like the Mona Lisa. Everybody wants it, but very few people can actually afford it. And even fewer have any idea what to do with it."
With reports from Boyd Erman in Toronto and Les Perreaux in Montreal