Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks is in negotiations with potential partners across the Middle East to help finance a new stadium, but is not looking to sell his entire 50 percent stake in the Premier League club, The Associated Press has learned.
Hicks has dispatched his key personnel from the United States to Kuwait and other countries in the region to find investors able to provide the capital that will help him meet his financial obligations to Liverpool -- notably building a new stadium -- and reduce the club's debt, people familiar with the negotiations told the AP on condition of anonymity because discussions are ongoing.
An official announcement about new partners in Kop Football (Holdings), the company that Hicks and 50-50 partner George Gillett Jr. used as the vehicle to buy Liverpool in 2007, could be weeks away, a high-placed executive said.
At one stage in October, the American owners came close to becoming one-third partners with an outside party, a person in the Gillett camp said.
A trip by Liverpool finance director Philip Nash to Kuwait this week sparked reports of a looming takeover, but those talks were restricted to plans for the replacement of the aging Anfield stadium and potential naming rights, the executive said.
Nash met with billionaire Nasser Al-Kharafi, who owns The Kharafi Group which is building the 60,000-seat Jaber Al-Ahmad International Stadium in Kuwait.
Al-Kharafi could be part of a group of investors being assembled by Hicks as he looks to cement his future at Liverpool and build the club's own 60,000-capacity stadium. Anfield seats only 45,300.
Sports Connection
Connecting you to your favorite North Texas sports teams as well as sports news around the globe.
Loay al-Kharafi, the group's vice chairman, emphatically denied Friday that the negotiations were about buying part of the club, but didn't quash links to the Stanley Park development.
"We are a private company. We're not obliged to declare our business," he said Saturday.
Building the new stadium adjacent to the 125-year-old Anfield could require 400 million pounds, and escalating borrowings costs resulting from the global economic downturn prompted Hicks and Gillett to suspend the project in October.
But with planning permission received for the Stanley Park site and considerable sums already spent on architects' plans, there is a renewed determination by Hicks to restart work as costs start falling.
The search for new investors comes as a July deadline approaches to refinance the loan that funded the Americans' 218.9 million-pound takeover two years ago.
That financing package of around 250 million pounds must be renewed by July after a six-month extension was granted by the Royal Bank of Scotland and US investment bank Wachovia. But RBS may not be in a position to extend further financing.
On Monday, RBS announced the biggest loss in British corporate history of some 28 billion pounds ($38.5 billion) (euro30.09 billion), weighed down by toxic assets that have prompted the government to take a nearly 70 percent stake in the bank.
The debt burden and stadium delays have provided frustrated fans with further ammunition in their campaign to force the Americans to sell.
The hostilities between Hicks and Gillett that raged in the first half of 2008 have eased, with the tycoons now working together on key future projects despite having differing opinions on the future of Liverpool chief executive Rick Parry and manager Rafa Benitez.
Hicks, who is a strong supporter of Benitez, called Parry a "disaster" in April and still wants him replaced. Gillett, however, has reservations about Benitez's importance to the team and acumen in the transfer market.
There is no suggestion that either Hicks or Gillett want to abandon Liverpool, despite the ongoing hostility of fans, which they will encounter first hand next Sunday when Anfield hosts Chelsea in the Premier League.
The Reds are second in the standings and in their best position since the 1990 title triumph to win the English championship.
