How Manchester United Was Bought

   

Aerial view of Old Trafford

 2003

Manchester United had in the past received bid for a takeover many times – notably a takeover bid of £623m from Rupert Murdoch’s BSKYB Corporation in 1998, which was accepted but was blocked by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission at the last stages in April 1999.

After that, there was a tussle between the then club manager, Sir Alex Ferguson and his horse-racing partners, John Magnier and J.P. Mcmanus, who had gradually become the largest shareholders through their company, Cubic Express. Magnier and Mcmanus had a dispute of ownership of the horse of Gibraltar with Ferguson and they tried to have Ferguson ousted as the manager of Manchester United. The Manchester United board of then acted swiftly by approaching investors in an attempt to reduce the Irishmen’s influence.

Avram Glazer, one of Malcolm Glazer’s son who was looking into investing in European football, alerted the Glazers. This led the Glazer family to their first tranche of Manchester United shares on the 2nd of March, 2003 – spending around £9 million on a 2.9% stake, which they purchased using a holding company named Red Football. Then, on 26th of September, 2003, the Glazers increased their share to 3.17% and again increased to 8.93% on the 20th of October, 2003. They met with David Gill, the club chief executive, to discuss their intentions after they upped their stake in the club to 15%, by 29 November, 2003.

2004

The Glazers increased their stake in the club three time in 2004, 12th February (16.31% ), June (20% ) and October (30% ) – giving them a total of 30% stake in 2004.

2005

The holding company, Red football, announced on the 12th of May, 2005 that they had reached an agreement with shareholders J.P. Mcmanus and John Magnier to purchase Cubic Express’s 28.7% stake in the club, which gave the Glazer family 58% of the club’s share. The third largest share was owned by Scottish mining entrepreneur, Harry Dobson, which the Glazer family also acquired – taking their total share of the club to 62%. They bought another 12.8% share on the 13th of May, 2005. And by 16th May, 2005, the Glazers had bought a total of 75.79% of Manchester United.

On 23rd of May, 2005, Malcolm Glazer announced that he owns 76.2% 0f Manchester United and subsequently made the final offer to takeover the club – the offer of 300 pence per share with a deadline of 3P.M. on 13th June, 2005. With this, the Manchester United board wrote to the remaining shareholders on 26th of May, 2005 – indicating their intention to sell their own shares and advising others to do the same. Chairman, Sir Roy Gardner and non-executive directors, Ian Much and Jim O’Neil offered their resignation in that same letter. Not with-standing the support of the board, the Glazers’ stake in the club only reached 97.3% by 14 June – short of the 97.6% threshold required for a compulsory buyout of all the remaining shares – it prompted them ( Glazers ) to extend the deadline on their offer to purchase the remaining shares until 27th of June, 2005. United fans were not happy of the possible takeover by Malcolm Glazer – fearing he was interested in what he could get from United, not what he could bring to United and the club incur debt under him.

Read Manchester United debt situation here :

On 22rd of June, 2005, the Glazers removed the Manchester United shares from the stock exchange for the first time in 14 years – ending the club’s public limited company ( PLC ) statue. The  Red Football released a statement on the 28th of June, 2005 that its shares had reached 98% (259,950,194 shares ) – prompting a freeze out of the remaining shares. The final valuation of the club was club about £790 million, approximately $1.5 billion at the exchange rate at that time.