There are only a few hours left for the candidates to take over Manchester United to finalize their third and final offer, which must be submitted before this Friday at 11:00 p.m. Even if the vagueness remains on the real will of the Glazer family to sell the club.
In five weeks, the Red Devils will end a busy sporting season with a League Cup victory, a qualification for the Champions League which awaits them and, in apotheosis, a final of the FA Cup against his great rival Manchester City at Wembley on June 3.
Who will be running the club then? No one can tell. The Glazers, American family and owners of Manchester United since 2005, have set the bar very high for the sale price: almost 7 billion euros. In early April, they launched a third round of bidding after those of mid-February and late March which still seemed a long way off.
Proposals from Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB) chairman Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani and British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, the two main declared takeover candidates, appear to have remained below 6 billion euros, which would already constitute a world record for all sports combined.
Ratcliffe, owner of the petrochemical group Ineos and the football clubs of Lausanne in Switzerland and Nice in France, has always wanted to buy back only the 69% controlled by the Glazers. His Qatari rival aimed to take over 100% of the club.
Finnish businessman Thomas Zilliacus, who had invited himself from the second call for tenders, announced in mid-April that he would stick to his offer from the end of March, the details of which we do not know, denouncing “a farce the purpose of which is to maximize the profits of the sellers at the expense of Manchester United”.
The Red Devils, 20 English league titles (a record) are a sporting asset apart by their aura and their global commercial power. But the reluctance of potential buyers is explained by a debt of 700 million euros which they will have to pay. They will also have to make massive investments in an Old Trafford stadium so far from current standards that it has not even been selected for the candidacy of England and Ireland for the organization of Euro 2028 .
Divisions within the Glazer siblings also certainly interfered with the process. Joel and Avram, who are also co-presidents of Manchester United, would see themselves staying, while Kevin, Edward, Bryan and Darcie want to leave the club completely. Several investment funds such as Elliot Investment Management and Carlyle Group are also in the running to help a buyer or the owners to complete their financing, if necessary by taking a minority stake, and to give themselves the means to invest afterwards.
