Takeover

[Derek Hardballs]

Matt Slater of The Athletic now weirdly saying that although Patel is the frontrunner, that Farnell & Hearn are flying to China on Tuesday to try and close a deal.

Quotes below:

“The situation at West Bromwich Albion is even more confusing.

As first reported by The Athletic last month, there is a three-way race to buy the Championship club from Guochuan Lai, the Chinese businessman who paid £175million for a majority stake for them in 2016, when they were a Premier League side. The contenders are: a group put together by the English sports lawyer Chris Farnell, Armenian entrepreneur Roman Gevorkyan’s Noah Football Group and a bid led by Florida-based businessman Shilen Patel.

The latter is very much the choice of the club’s senior staff and also of West Brom’s main creditor, MSD Partners, the investment firm linked to American IT billionaire Michael Dell. And it would be fair to say Patel is now the frontrunner. However, Farnell’s group still believes it has the inside track with Lai, the man who is actually selling the shares, and Farnell and potential partner Alex Hearn are going to China this week to try to close their staged takeover of the club.

Lai borrowed £2million from Hearn in 2021. The loan was secured on 2.35 per cent of West Brom’s shares, with a deadline for repayment of last Thursday. That deadline, unsurprisingly, came and went without repayment and the accrued interest has raised Lai’s debt to Hearn to more than £4million.

Hearn has recently sold his main business, a domestic heating firm called Warmfront, so he does not need his money back urgently. In fact, he has recently signalled to the club that he would be happy to wait for a change of control at The Hawthorns before repayment.

But, equally, he is willing to see if Farnell can get his deal over the line and perhaps convert that loan into a minority stake. Gevorkyan, in the meantime, has been encouraged to remain in the race, as all outcomes are still possible.”


Another attempt by Farnell to get his name in the media following Patel getting ahead in the race?

Erm ? great!