American owners ‘commencing a process to explore strategic alternatives’ and appoint Raine Group, which oversaw the sale of Chelsesa, as financial adviser
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The Glazer family are looking to sell Manchester United after owning it for 17 years, triggering a 27% jump in the share price to $16.6 in after hours trading on Nasdaq.
The owners have said we’ve done our 17 years, we’ve taken out as much as we can, we’re under constant pressure from fans and therefore what we need to do is try to find a buyer at a time when the Premier League looks like it might make more money because lots of people are buying rights and we’ve got the asset value to where we could get it.
And what’s really driven that is the differences in value. A year ago Newcastle sold for £305m. Chelsea sold for £2.5bn plus an additional £1.75bn for reinvestment in the club, nearly £5bn. When you’re Manchester United or you’re Liverpool and you’re the owner of those clubs, you look at those numbers and say we can easily get that, and that’s a huge return on our initial investment.
It may well be that all these American hedge funds are looking at football assets believing they are undervalued even at £4bn or £5bn because the Premier League will continue to grow…
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