Qatar’s Al-Watan newspaper has reported that Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani’s bid to complete a takeover of Manchester United has been completed and will be announced soon.
What is the latest MUFC takeover news?
For months now rumours have circulated about who could be the new owners of Old Trafford, or if the club had even actually been fully put up for sale by the Glazer family.
While the situation is ever-changing, it wasn’t that long ago that Ineos’ Sir Jim Ratcliffe was viewed as the leading candidate as his bid would see two of the Glazers stay put in a partial takeover, though it would still see the British billionaire become majority owner.
However, as reported by CNBC, Manchester United shares surged as much as 30% in premarket trading on Tuesday, before paring gains, after Qatari media suggested Sheikh Jassim was likely to succeed with his takeover bid.
Indeed, a Tweet from the Al-Watan newspaper wrote about the “success of Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad bin Jassim’s acquisition of Manchester United” and said the announcement of deal the will be done “soon.”
On top of that, Zaid Al-Hamdan, who is the Vice Chairman of the Canadian Qatari Business Council and Chairman of Armasite Group – and is followed by Sheikh Jassim’s brother on Twitter – also spoke of ‘successful’ acquisition.
He wrote on social media: “Congratulations to Shaikh Jassim Bin Hamad Bin Jassim on his acquisition of Man Utd.”
How big is Man United’s debt?
In that CNBC report, they also note that a spokesperson for Manchester United was not immediately available to comment and so these reports are only coming from Qatar and have not been confirmed by the English side as of yet.
Last week, BBC Sport stated that Sheikh Jassim had made a final bid for 100% of the club and he will clear United’s debt – reported to be £969.6m – and has a separate fund for the club and local community as part of his offer.
If he is to fail with that bid, the Qatari banker will pull out of the race and so it feels as though we have finally reached crunch time with regard to the whole takeover saga.
It remains to be seen if his offer will be enough to meet the Glazer family’s demands but it seems those outside of England are pretty confident a deal has been struck at last.