Ken Bates interview on LUTV 22/9/12

“This investment… negotiations have been going on for too long and we all know that. There have been points arising which we have been resolving but I think I should start off by pointing out that our potential investors, let’s call them that, they have problems because a confidentiality agreement was signed. It’s very important to them because they are a banking institution and they are a public company therefore anything that was said can affect their share price which they have to be careful of because it can affect fluctuation in the share price.
Secondly, because they’re a banking institution they are under severe regulation. They have regulations that maybe if we had it in England we wouldn’t have had the banking fiasco that we’re still trying to recover from. And this is a company that has offices in Dubai as well as Bahrain. They have investments and interests throughout the Gulf, North Africa and, in fact, Asia including India. So they have a very diverse portfolio in various areas of interest but also shear time difference between the various areas.
In our particular remit, they’re using London lawyers so there’s certain logistical problems. However, I’ve discussed it with them at length and there’s certain things I can make public.
But before I do that, let’s go back to… we signed the agreement in June and since then there has been non-stop speculation, agitation stirred up by those idiots in LUST. In fact, everything you read on Twitter and any public statements that they put out, are all inaccurate. A lot of it is personal abuse directed against me, which is quite disgraceful and more important I have to say that their behaviour and public utterances as such including Twitter that we have spent quite a lot of time, wasted time, reassuring the potential investors that these ignorant, illiterate minority do not reflect the overwhelming majority of Leeds United. They have are giving the club an undeserved bad name, which hasn’t helped.
The fact of the matter is, a football club isn’t the kind of business that banks get involved in. Normally it’s outside the normal scope, so they have to have a learning curve to understand how a football club works. When they come in, they want to make it a success. To make it a success they have to do the ground work. I should say that four of their top people are here and were here yesterday for a long meeting and they are here as our guests today. I was talking to one of them and I said “how many customers do you think you’ve got?” he said “3,000″ I said “how often do you talk to them?” he said “every quarter in a report” I said “we’ve got “150,000 customers, 25,000 who turn up and they want to talk to us every day because that’s what football is like, it’s people’s lives”.
And there’s nothing to tell them. In the absence of intel, speculation abounds, gossip becomes a fact and it gets worse and worse. As I put in my programme notes for Tuesday, LUST and Marching on Together are a contradiction in terms. They’re just a waste of space. They’re achieving nothing except making themselves look stupid. Also the silly people that follow them.
So let’s go on to be more exact: we are well advanced with our discussions, there are a number of technical points that need to be resolved. Some of the delay has been because of summer holidays because of the heat in the Gulf and a lot of people go to cooler climes and of course our people also had holidays, including lawyers. All these things delay things. But we’re making good progress. We had a very positive meeting yesterday. The potential investors are looking now to get this matter concluded as soon as possible now I can’t say any more than that and I don’t intend to make any more statements. All I will suggest is that Phil Hay tries to be a football writer and not a financial expert which he ain’t.
Let’s get on with the business, let’s get on with our business on the field and the fans get behind the team and let our investors and the board get on off the field, to bring this matter to an early conclusion. Both parties regret that because of a lot of factors beyond their control, we missed the August window. We’re already planning for the January window. As I said earlier, we have four of the top people – top executives, directors from the institution… we had one bit of bad luck because the chairman was coming to meet me, we were going to resolve a few things chairman-to-chairman, some things only chairmen can do but unfortunately he had to pull out at the last minute for personal reasons. We’re both disappointed but we’re going to try get together as soon as possible which his personal situation has been resolved.”